Handling Input in OpenGL: Keyboard and Mouse Controls
Welcome back to our OpenGL adventure! So far, we’ve learned how to draw shapes and understand the basics of the OpenGL pipeline. But what if you want to interact with those shapes? What if you want to move them around or make something happen when you press a key or click the mouse? That’s where handling input comes in!
In this post, we’re going to learn how to control your OpenGL programs using the keyboard and mouse. Let’s dive in!
What is Input?
Input is how you communicate with your computer. When you press a key on your keyboard or click the mouse, you’re giving your computer instructions, like “move this shape” or “change the color.” OpenGL can take those instructions and do something cool with them, like making a character jump or a car move in a game.
Setting Up Keyboard Controls
Let’s start with the keyboard. In OpenGL, you can write code that tells your program what to do when certain keys are pressed. For example, you might want to move a square to the left when you press the left arrow key.
Here’s how you can set that up:
- Detecting a Key Press: First, we need to tell our program to listen for when a key is pressed. This is called detecting input. We can do this…
