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103 Mar 21, 2012 at 23:36

I’m trying to use glFrustum() but I’m having mixed results because I have no idea how the thing works. I’ve read many thing about it, but yet, I can’t get it to display a model properly. I get mixed results no matter what numbers I put in, and I just can’t find the logic of it. There is no glPerpective or glLookAt as you do with Glut, so I assume that glFrustum() is what needs to be used instead, but can’t get to do ‘Jack’. Can anyone please explain to me how to use glFrustum? All I want to do is set the FOV and not clip half the model. glTranslatef() I assume I need to use to pan and zoom by moving the camera right? and glRotatef() to rotate right? Thanks!

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139 Mar 21, 2012 at 23:48

Did you want gluPerspective or gluLookAt? These aren’t part of GLUT, just GLU, which will always be there if OpenGL is there, so they’re perfectly fine to use in your app.

However, if you want to use glFrustum, try

float halfWidth = tan(0.5 * fovHorizontal);
float halfHeight = tan(0.5 * fovVertical);
glFrustum(-halfWidth, halfWidth, -halfHeight, halfHeight, zNear, zFar);


That’s what gluPerspective does internally (except it calculates fovHorizontal as aspect * fovVertical), so that should do it.

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103 Mar 22, 2012 at 00:13

I use an OpenGL control that doesn’t use Glut/Glu whatever, so glu… is not available to me, so glFrustum is what I have to use.

so if I have a FOV of 35, how do I get the fovH and fovV? Is FOV normally horizontal or vertical? fovH = fovV * width / height; but how to get fovV?

What about the near/far? how do we know what to use? Is it the bbox max size of the model for zFar? what about zNear?

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139 Mar 22, 2012 at 00:32

You have to decide if your FOV of 35 is intended to be the vertical or horizontal fov, or the max or min fov, or whatever. (Also don’t forget to convert it from degrees to radians if your trig functions require radians.)

Near clip is how close you want the camera to be able get to a polygon before clipping it. And far clip is how far away you want to be able to see things before they clip out. You have to decide these too. If the near clip is too small it will cause Z-fighting and suchlike. For example, for rendering a human-scale world you might use a near clip of 10 centimeters and a far clip of 10 kilometers.

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103 Mar 22, 2012 at 00:48

oh ok! so if I decide that my FOV of 35 is horixontal, then how do I get fovV?

about the near/far clipping, do the units are those of the model or glFrustum uses meteric? Way, if a house is 50’ x 50’ is it safe to set zNear to 1 and zFar to 51? Because on my end, one of the corner of the house is at 0,0,0 and I set the zFar to 50 and when I rotate it with glRotatef() it gets clipped when going away from the eye!?

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103 Mar 22, 2012 at 01:02

I trired fovV = 2*atan(fovH*(Width/Height)); but now everything is almost flat ha ha!

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139 Mar 22, 2012 at 03:32

Just do

halfHeight = halfWidth * height / width;
(or: halfHeight = halfWidth / aspect, if you have the aspect ratio handy)

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103 Mar 22, 2012 at 03:42

Got it, thanks once more Reedbeta, you’re a lifesaver :)))

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103 Mar 22, 2012 at 13:29

One more thing, does glu32.dll installed by the video driver as part of OpenGL on Windows systems?

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139 Mar 22, 2012 at 16:50

Yes, opengl32.dll and glu32.dll should always be available on Windows.

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103 Mar 22, 2012 at 17:22

ok thanks Reedbeta.