The Megastrata project started out like any other first-time project: cobbled together from examples found on the internet. One of the long-standing traditions regarding development involve the so-called “hack-n-slash” technique: smash the code around until it works.

Megastrata started life out as the NoiseViewer, which was, true to its name, simply a 2D noise patter viewer. Hence, there was originally no need for a depth buffer.

When the leap was made to 3D, I made it work on Windows. But the OS X version didn’t render the same way. Wolfgang put a lot of effort into debugging it, and after sending screenshots back and forth, we understood that the problem was with the depth buffer.

I saw something suspicious when I looked up the OpenGL FAQ on the subject. Step one reads:

1. Ask for a depth buffer when you create your window.

Evidently, Windows automatically specifies a depth buffer created when initializing the window, whereas OS X does not do this by default.

We changed the line in the code that read:

glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_RGB);

to:

glutInitDisplayMode(GLUT_DOUBLE | GLUT_RGB | GLUT_DEPTH);

and the problem was solved.