psychtoolbox-3-common 3.0.9+svn2579.dfsg1-1 / usr / share / psychtoolbox-3 / PsychOpenGL / Contents.m

% PsychOpenGL -- OpenGL support for Matlab.
%
% Psychtoolbox allows you to directly call low-level OpenGL commands from
% the Matlab environment in nearly the same way as you could do from native
% C or C++ code. This way you can code and use image manipulation
% algorithms and 3D graphics algorithms in Matlab, utilizing the power of
% modern graphics hardware by calling OpenGL functions.
%
% Access to OpenGL from Matlab is provided by the "Matlab OpenGL toolbox"
% (MOGL), whose original OS/X version was developed, implemented and
% contributed to Psychtoolbox under the MIT license by Prof. Richard F.
% Murray, University of York, Canada. (The code was under GPL license until
% 2010, but has been relicensed to the more permissive MIT license in 2011).
%
% MOGL provides one Matlab wrapper M-File for each corresponding OpenGL
% function. The wrapper file calls into a special MEX file (moglcore) which
% implements the C-language interface to OpenGL. The syntax of a Matlab
% OpenGL command is mostly identical to its C counterpart with a few
% small exceptions that are imposed to us by the design of Matlab:
%
% 1. Return values are returned in Matlab-style, as left-hand side
% arguments of the calls, instead of being right-hand side arguments as in
% C:
%
% E.g., the C language call glGetIntegerv(GLenum pname, GLint* params);
% becomes params = glGetIntegerv(pname); in Matlab, because 'params' is a
% return argument of glGetIntegerv.
%
% 2. Commands that don't take arguments don't have empty braces, because
% Matlab doesn't allow this:
%
% E.g., the C language call glEnd();  becomes glEnd; in Matlab.
%
% 3. All GL, GLU and AGL constants start with prefix GL. instead of GL_
% E.g., GL_RGB becomes GL.RGB, GL_DEPTH_TEST becomes GL.DEPTH_TEST, ...
%
% Each subroutine that intends to use GL constants needs to define the
% variable GL as global: Example
%   function myOpenGLSubroutine()
%   global GL; % Define GL variable as global.
%   ...rest of function implementation...
%   return;
%
% If you want to use GLU constants, then 'global GLU' is also needed.
%
% 4. In your main Matlab script or M-File you need to call the function
% InitializeMatlabOpenGL;  *before* calling Screen('OpenWindow', ...) the
% first time. This command initializes the OpenGL for Matlab toolbox and
% sets up Psychtoolbox to play nicely with Matlab-OpenGL and other OpenGL
% toolboxes. Psychtoolbox will then attach a 24-bit depth buffer (z-buffer)
% and a 8-bit stencil buffer to each onscreen window, so occlusion handling
% works properly when rendering 3D-Stimuli.
%
% Please note that InitializeMatlabOpenGL() allows to optionally set the
% 'debuglevel', the amount of error checking automatically performed during
% execution of your scripts. By default, the debug level is set so that
% MOGL checks for OpenGL errors after execution of each single OpenGL call!
% This is nice for debugging code, but can significantly impact performance
% for complex rendering code! Make sure to explicitely set the debuglevel
% to '0' once your experiment code is performing as expected, so you can
% get higher rendering performance.
% 
%
% Each time after calling a Psychtoolbox Screen() command for 2D drawing,
% you need to call Screen('BeginOpenGL', window); to tell PTB that you want
% to use OpenGL code to draw into onscreen- or offscreen-window 'window',
% so PTB can set up the window properly for your OpenGL code. Each time
% after you've finished drawing with OpenGL commands and you want to draw
% with PTB again, you'll need to call Screen('EndOpenGL', window), so PTB
% can switch back to its own drawing engine.
%
% Psychtoolbox provides two Screen subfunctions that allow you to either
% use Psychtoolbox textures in your own OpenGL code or to inject your own
% self-made OpenGL textures into Psychtoolbox for use with
% Screen Drawingcommands. See the Screen online help with...
%
% Screen SetOpenGLTexture?
% Screen GetOpenGLTexture?
%
% ... for how to use these functions.
% This allows you to conveniently upload images into PTB with the usual
% img=imread(filename); tex=Screen('MakeTexture', win, img) methods and
% then use the texture in your OpenGL drawing code. It also allows you to
% access the images of Quicktime movies and images captured by the video
% capture functions in your OpenGL code.
%
% We also provide a couple of higher-level functions, implemented as M-Files
% to solve common tasks:
%
% * LoadOBJFile()  -- This implements a simple loader for Alias/Wavefront
% OBJ geometry files. Most common 3D graphics applications (e.g, Blender,
% Maya, 3D-Studio-Max, ...) allow you to export 3D objects and scenes as files
% in ASCII-OBJ format. LoadOBJFile() allows you to load such files into
% Matlab. See 'help LoadOBJFile' for usage info. The loader is pretty
% limited at the moment, so read the file carefully to understand its
% limitations!
%
% * moglDrawDots3D() -- High speed drawing of 3D dots or points, similar to
% Screen('DrawDots') for the 2D case.
%
% * moglmorpher()  -- A high-speed shape rendering and morphing function.
% moglmorpher allows to quickly draw (=render) single 3D objects loaded by
% LoadOBJFile(). It also allows you to load a collection of shapes and
% quickly morph them into each other by linear combination of their shape-
% and surface-normal vectors. This is mostly useful for 3D facial animation
% and face morphing (face perception studies) and for high-level 3D object
% recognition tasks. Have a look at MorphDemo for a nice example of how to
% use LoadOBJFile and moglmorpher. This demo was contributed by Quoc, C.
% Vuong, MPI for Biological Cybernetics Tuebingen, Germany.
%
% * LoadShaderFromFile() and LoadGLSLProgramFromFiles() -- These functions
% allow to load OpenGL GL Shading language (GLSL) shader definition files
% from the filesystem and to create GLSL shaders from them. When used
% properly, one can implement very complex lighting models and a host of
% image processing operations directly on the graphics hardware. This can
% provide speed gains anywhere from 10 to 1000 times faster than when
% executing such algorithms on the CPU. Have a look at GLSLDemo for some
% example of how to use GLSL shaders. Use of GLSL shaders requires state of
% the art graphics hardware, so if you don't have a recent graphics adapter
% installed in your machine, these demos and functions may fail.
%
% * moglFDF() -- A high-speed renderer for "formless dot fields", random
% dot field motion stimuli for the creation of "structure from motion"
% stimuli from 3D objects.
%
% More high-level functions will follow...
%
% For demos on how to code OpenGL in Matlab, have a look at the demos in
% 'Psychtoolbox/PsychDemos/OpenGL4MatlabDemos/'
%
% Support for 3rd party OpenGL MEX-Files:
%
% You can also code up OpenGL algorithms in the C programming language and
% compile them into Matlab-MEX files if you have "need for speed". Your Mex
% files will just contain the mixture of ANSI C code and OpenGL calls, but
% no code to setup the window, OpenGL rendering context, or to flip the
% front- and backbuffers. Psychtoolbox takes care of setting up OpenGL and
% windows for you. You just need to call the InitializeMatlabOpenGL;
% function at the beginning of your script and wrap each invocation of your
% mex-file into Screen('BeginOpenGL', win) and Screen('EndOpenGL',win)
% calls. Use the Screen('Flip', win) command as usual to take care of
% stimlulus onset.
%
% If you want to write OpenGL mex-files that are portable across different
% operating systems (OS-X, Windows, Linux) then have a look at:
% 'Psychtoolbox/PsychOpenGL/MOGL/source' for how to do this. This folder
% contains the source code and Makefiles for our own moglcore mex-file...
%
% KNOWN LIMITATIONS:
%
% If you use many immediate mode OpenGL rendering calls, rendering speed in
% Matlab may be significantly lower than when executing the same code from
% C or C++. This is the price you'll have to pay for using Matlab. However,
% immediate mode rendering is discouraged even in C for anything but the
% most trivial tasks, it's just that you pay a slightly higher "time
% penalty" for doing the wrong thing in Matlab than in C. Well written code
% will not cause any significant performance difference to C.
%
% Some OpenGL functions are not yet implemented in the toolbox, because
% these functions can't get automatically generated, so their wrappers need
% to be coded manually. Our goal is to provide full support for the
% OpenGL-API but finalizing all functions may take some time. Mostly some
% of the query-functions - functions that don't set OpenGL state or execute
% some operation, but query the current settings of OpenGL, are missing.
%
% Also, some of the more exotic OpenGL extensions are not yet supported,
% especially there is no support for old-style Vertexprograms and
% Fragmentprograms, but GLSL vertexshaders and fragmentshaders are a
% complete - and easier to use - replacement for these.
%
% Apart from these limitations that will get removed in the future, there
% are limitations imposed by your operating system and graphics hardware.
% Support for OpenGL functions varies between different graphics hardware,
% so if you want to use the latest and greatest OpenGL functions, you'll
% need to buy and install the latest and greatest graphics hardware.
%
% CONTENTS:
%
% * All supported OpenGL low-level functions can be found in the folder
% 'Psychtoolbox/PsychOpenGL/MOGL/wrap/'. Functions prefixed with _ are not
% yet implemented.
%
% * A number of interesting GLSL shaders for realtime image processing can
% be found in 'Psychtoolbox/PsychOpenGL/PsychGLSLShaders/'. These may only work on
% state of the art graphics hardware.
%
% * High-level helper functions (e.g., OBJ file loading, morphing, ...) can
% be found in 'Psychtoolbox/PsychOpenGL/' and its subfolders.
%
% * Demos can be found in 'Psychtoolbox/PsychDemos/OpenGL4MatlabDemos'
%
% Lot's of documentation, tutorials, code samples and news about OpenGL can
% be found at:
%
% http://www.opengl.org
%
% Enjoy!

% History:
% 17.04.2006 -- created (MK)
% 27.03.2011 -- Update info about license - New MIT license (MK)