Getting started

CMake

In order to use SGCT, it has to be included in the CMakeLists.txt of your project. In the majority of cases it is only necessary to:

add_subdirectory(<path to sgct>)
target_include_directories(<your application> PUBLIC <path to sgct>/include)
target_link_libraries(<your application> PUBLIC sgct)

In that case, SGCT will automatically be included in your project file when generating it.

Commandline argument

You can find the available commandline arguments by either looking at the commandline.cpp file’s helpMessage() function, or by executing your application with the commandline argument -help, which will print that message and immediately terminate the application. The most important setting that might be useful for the user is the -config parameter which accepts a single argument that is the path to an XML configuration file that is loaded and applied at application startup. The file format of the configuration files are described in greater detail here. If no configuration file is provided, SGCT will create a “cluster” consisting of a single node with a single 1280x720 window.

When running multiple instances of the application on the same machine (if your configuration file is configured to support that), you will also need the -local n and -client parameters. As the automatic IP detection cannot determine which of the nodes to use, the -local n parameter has to be used to distinguish the nodes, starting with the number 0, using -local 0 for the node identified by the IP address 127.0.0.1, -local 1 for the address 127.0.0.2 and so forth. Each node that is not the server also needs to be started with the -client parameter or it will think it is the server and not try to connect to the actual server node. Commandline arguments contains more detailed information about the available commandline arguments that can be passed to SGCT applications.

First application

Creating applications using SGCT is very simple and requires only a bit of coding. Here is an example that opens a window and sets its color to white. Please note that OpenGL only supports OpenGL versions 3.3 and newer, which means that the legacy fixed-pipeline functios will not work.

See also the examples in the src/apps folder for more examples on how to use SGCT. These can be included in your project by enabling the SGCT_EXAMPLES option in CMake.

#include "sgct/sgct.h"

void drawFun(RenderData data) {
    glClearColor(1.f, 1.f, 1.f, 1.f);
    glClear();
}

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
  std::vector<std::string> arg(argv + 1, argv + argc);
  Configuration config = parseArguments(arg);
  config::Cluster cluster = loadCluster(config.configFilename);

  Engine::Callbacks callbacks;
  callbacks.draw = drawFun;

  try {
    Engine::create(cluster, callbacks, config);
  }
  catch (const std::runtime_error& e) {
    Log::Error("%s", e.what());
    Engine::destroy();
    return EXIT_FAILURE;
  }

  Engine::instance().render();
  Engine::destroy();
  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}