It’s almost weekend, and time for a lighthearted post on the two realtime 3D computer graphics libraries that are available on Windows in 2011: OpenGL and Direct3D. The reason I mention the year is simply because of the fact that two years from now, this information will be as untrue as the Wikipedia article* on this matter due to rapid hardware and software developments. But for now, let’s bash it out.
Okay, so I know you’re probably here because you searched for “window wrapper class” or something similar and expected the article that I use to host on Scriptionary that threw a bunch of C++ code at you for you to copy and paste. I regret to inform you that the article you were looking for has ceased to exist.
Sorry about that.
However, in its place I have for you this very post which will teach you how to accomplish creating such a wrapper all by yourself. I hope that is okay since all you really need to know is the how to create a window procedure that you can use with your custom class.
This post lists the code for creating a high resolution timer for the Microsoft Windows platform. High resolution timers are often used in multimedia and entertainment applications for timing events up to the microsecond.
This is a heavily modified re-post of the article that used to be on the Scriptionary.com website before the change to the blog, read the source code for details.
Here’s a little snippet I’d like to share with you since there really isn’t a good example online that shows you how to count the processor cores and threads on Microsoft Windows using the Windows API through C++.
2023 Update: You probably don’t want to use this code since there are likely some serious issues with it. But, fun fact: a major tech company reached out to me to clarify what the license for this is. So, if you want to screw yourself over and use it, let’s say it’s MIT licensed and call it a day.
What: A C++ wrapper around both WINAPI (Microsoft Windows) and PThreads (POSIX threads) functionality.
Why: To abstract cross platform functionality.
Remarks: On windows, CRITICAL_SECTION objects cannot be shared cross-process. This means that the class is tied to your application or DLL process. Comments are in Doxygen/Javadoc style.