OpenGL-状态机

一、什么是状态机？

  A finite state machine is any device or program that remembers its current state and performs ‎actions based on that state.
  Here is a visual depiction of a simple state machine. It is a model of a simple on/off switch with two states.

  Some observations over this machine.
  ● It consists of two states, “on” and “off”. This machine can therefore be in exactly one of the two states at any point in time. In other words, the transitions between states are instantaneous.
  ● The “flick” event causes it to transition between states.
  ● When the machine enters the “on” state, a side effect occurs. A light is turned on.
  ● When the machine exits the “on” state, another side effect occurs. A light is turned off.
  This simple state machine is comparable to a boolean variable—which can either be true or false—that controls the on-ness of something.

二、OpenGL是一个状态机？

  OpenGL is by itself a large state machine: a collection of variables that define how OpenGL should currently operate. The state of OpenGL is commonly referred to as the OpenGL context. When using OpenGL, we often change its state by setting some options, manipulating some buffers and then render using the current context.
  Whenever we tell OpenGL that we now want to draw lines instead of triangles for example, we change the state of OpenGL by changing some context variable that sets how OpenGL should draw. As soon as we change the context by telling OpenGL it should draw lines, the next drawing commands will now draw lines instead of triangles.
  When working in OpenGL we will come across several state-changing functions that change the context and several state-using functions that perform some operations based on the current state of OpenGL. As long as you keep in mind that OpenGL is basically one large state machine, most of its functionality will make more sense.

1.OpenGL自身是一个巨大的状态机(State Machine)：一系列的变量描述OpenGL此刻应当如何运行。OpenGL的状态通常被称为OpenGL上下文(Context)。我们通常使用如下途径去更改OpenGL状态：设置选项，操作缓冲。最后，我们使用当前OpenGL上下文来渲染。
2.假设当我们想告诉OpenGL去画线段而不是三角形的时候，我们通过改变一些上下文变量来改变OpenGL状态，从而告诉OpenGL如何去绘图。一旦我们改变了OpenGL的状态为绘制线段，下一个绘制命令就会画出线段而不是三角形。
3.当使用OpenGL的时候，我们会遇到一些状态设置函数(State-changing Function)，这类函数将会改变上下文。以及状态使用函数(State-using Function)，这类函数会根据当前OpenGL的状态执行一些操作。只要你记住OpenGL本质上是个大状态机，就能更容易理解它的大部分特性。

三、举个栗子

  we specify the color to clear the screen with using glClearColor. Whenever we call glClear and clear the color buffer, the entire color buffer will be filled with the color as configured by glClearColor.
  the glClearColor function is a state-setting function and glClear is a state-using function in that it uses the current state to retrieve the clearing color from.

glClearColor(0.2f, 0.3f, 0.3f, 1.0f);
glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);

  This will result in a dark green-blueish color.