High level, OpenGL friendly libraries for a beginner-intermediate C++ programmer

Question

It's recently been suggested to me that I should "skip low level apis entirely for now and just use some high level libraries built on top of them. Because building on plain opengl/directx is a lot of work, even for an experienced programmer"

Can anyone suggest some or a place where i can find some that will suite me? Thanks!

Answer 1

It really depends on what you're trying to do. Many people opt for something like SDL (simple directmedia layer) that is an abstraction over OpenGL/DirectDraw/GDI (and more) but it's still kind of low-level. It works natively with c++.

Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, 3D hardware via OpenGL, and 2D video framebuffer. It is used by MPEG playback software, emulators, and many popular games, including the award winning Linux port of "Civilization: Call To Power."

http://www.libsdl.org/

One advantage of choosing a very popular library like this one is that there's a TON of example work out there.