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title: Load Modern OpenGL for your WIN API window! WIN API for...
description: A tutorial on loading a modern OpenGL context using the Windows API, part of a game development series. The core challenge is a bootstrapping problem: modern...
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# Load Modern OpenGL for your WIN API window! WIN API for Game Developers, day 17.

**[Low Level Game Dev](https://daily.dev/sources/lowlevelgamedev)** · 9 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

A tutorial on loading a modern OpenGL context using the Windows API, part of a game development series. The core challenge is a bootstrapping problem: modern WGL functions require OpenGL to already be loaded, but loading OpenGL requires a window. The standard industry solution is to create a temporary invisible window, load OpenGL and the WGL extensions via GLAD, destroy the fake window, then create the real window with a modern OpenGL context. The tutorial covers setting up GLAD as a dependency (including CMake integration), using WGL_ARB_create_context attributes to specify OpenGL version and enable multisampling antialiasing, and using the CS_OWNDC flag for a permanent device context suitable for real-time applications.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPH6-CIKtE8>

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---

Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development), [#c](https://daily.dev/tags/c)

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