OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Versions 4.3

Alright. So I bought this book (actually I preordered it somewhere about 10th of january LAST YEAR (2012) ) and it finally got to me.First hopes were - please let it be different than previous version (where it was difficult to build program without deprecated functionality). I started reading it and was pretty happy that it did not suffer from this.After reading first 6 chapters, chapter 9 and chapter 10 I have to say - OK, everything is organized and the book indeed IS REFERENCE GUIDE and not tutorial. But that is still alright, because every chapter starts with basic things and explains them simply. Than it starts to get complicated, as the more advanced features are discussed. When I was reading the chapters sequentially, I alwais had a problem with understanding the end of chapter. But after reading another chapter (and slowly getting to referenced parts - some topics jump between chapters - some does jump a lot), it became a little clearer to me.Overall this book explained in the end most of the topics I needed (with very little gaps!) and I was able to build advanced example program (assignment outside of this book) by combining the techniques I read from this book.Ok now for the negatives - I am disapointed, that the webpage still does not have any sourcecode on the webpage. They promised on the site, that they will fix this in a metter of days. The webpage (according to returned headers) did not change in anyway for almost month now.Another problem I discovered are the helper libraries (3rd party) which they mentioned for operating with matrices and vectors on the client (CPU, aplication). I found just 1 library with that name and I wasn`t able to get all the capabilities which they use in the examples. But basicly - this whole library is not a part of opengl and can be substituted (or even ommited) and everything will still work (maybe you would just need to read further book to understand what these libraries does - as it IS thoroughly explained in the book).Also chapter with tesselation is very short and not explained to the details (for example - I had to google out why would anyone use tesselation shaders instead of geometry shaders (which I felt were superset of tesselation shaders) - which were for me far more intuitive) - and I had some troubles understanding how to use them...Overall - I have this book for about 2 weeks and I already covered and understood about 300 pages including some advanced and new staff. But I had an advantage, that I studied this subject before (in school, previous redbook and superbible). Still I can say that this one is the best source on new opengl functionality I ever had my hands on....

More of an overview and reference than a tutorial. If you want a tutorial, get your hands dirty with Anton's OpenGL (free online). If you are a beginner, I would only recommend you plowing through this book if you need the vocabulary. You are going to be lost without some graphics engine architecture. If you already know the concepts for the most part, seeing it again here isn't going to improve your understanding, but you will be stuck on things you haven't seen before, so again will be of little help. The provided code looks like it was pulled from the previous version, is missing some chapters. You should try to find the SDL conversions to run in VS. The best this books does is to help you form a cohesion on what is going on, which earns back a star. Overall, slightly disappointed, however it is fine as a pass through to your furthur studies and a prelude to the blue book.

As far as OpenGL books go, this one does an excellent job of explaining the API in a sensible order. I am also happy to report that the content of the book is much improved over the 7th edition, which was a confused mix of OpenGL 2.1- and 3.3+.The book assumes you are already proficient with C/C++ and have a basic understanding of linear algebra and computer graphics. If you are a beginner programmer that would like to do graphical programming, do NOT get this book. It will be way over your head and you will be disappointed. There are simpler alternatives - SDL and the likes. Again, the target demographic for this book is intermediate to experienced programmers.I would have given this book five stars, but the Kindle edition is rife with spelling and grammatical errors, even in the code examples! The spelling errors in the code examples make certain examples difficult to understand, especially when variable names change midway through the code. Not cool, guys (authors). Don't include code snippets that would generate compile time errors.

I think I was one of the first who purchased this book when it appeared on amazon.com. As soon as I saw that an 8th edition was due out on 2013 I just preordered the book (some day in early 2012) and did not wonder if it was the right thing to do, I just trusted the authors that this edition would be anything better than the previous one. I did not even wait that it could be purchased on amazon.it (I'm from Italy), so I could have saved some money for the shipping cost. I paid earlier to benefit earlier. And now, I have it here by me and couldn't go on after reading a few pages because the source code is not yet available! 60 euros are waiting for justice:) I'm checking EVERY DAY at the authors' website and what makes me angry is the sentence: "Please check back in a couple of days for the new site.". Almost a month now. COME ON!UPDATE 1: more than one month has passed and finally "most" of the code is available at opengl-redbook.com. I changed the rating from 1 star to 3 stars. I'll give it 5 stars if the code will be completely available and if that will reflect my opinion about the book.

The book claims to be "the official guide to learning OpenGL", but it does an absolutely lousy job at helping you understand this complex API. It represents an enormous step back from the previous version 2 book, which I also have.This book goes into great detail about pointless and redundant functions, like explaining how to allocate, de-allocate, bind, and query for the existence of every type of OpenGL resource (which typically gets a full page per resource, but is always the same except for the function name) - yet it fails to explain what it actually is you are allocating, or what you might use it for, or what a good strategy for its use is.As an example: what is a VAO? Sure, having read the book, I know how to allocate one now - now tell me: why would I? What does it do, and how do I best use it?Function arguments are also barely explained. A vital table, explaining what the arguments to glReadBuffer() actually do, and that was present in the predecessor book, is now missing. I understand a book must have a limited length, but a book that positions itself as "the official guide to learning" should surely prioritize the basics of the API over much more esoteric subjects like the procedural texturing chapter?There's also the use of home-grown software to skip over certain important details - the book uses several pages to describe how to use a function that isn't even in OpenGL, but part of the authors' personal library. Meanwhile, any explanation of the OpenGL API being called inside that function is missing completely - and a listing for the function is also missing.All in all, this is a pretty useless and confusing book. If you are buying this in the hopes of understanding OpenGL, you will have a long struggle ahead of you including many trips to the internet to try and figure out what all those weird functions really do.

This book has been touted by a lot of websites as the 'de facto' OpenGL book, it is OK, but, it has the tendency to introduce a section of code, without really explaining, resulting in me having to search the internet for help.My second criticism is that it relies heavily on 3rd party library such as GLUT, which isn't always what you want.Lastly, the kindle book has a few formatting issues. A few of the links sent me to blank pages or to an incorrect page.

I just received my copy of this book today and I must say I'm impressed.I have a fairly strong background in C/C++ but have not really done any computer graphics work and I am currently trying to learn Java, OpenGL and JOGL all at once for a large cross-platform project. I bought this book really expecting to have my work cut out for me in applying the techniques and code samples in Java; I couldn't have been more wrong. In the first day, I have pushed through three and a bit chapters of this book and have all the source code samples so far working in Java without GLUT (albeit with a bit of Googling for JOGL info). Side note: for those that don't want to use GLUT, it is easy enough to remove. The book only uses that for OS-specific stuff like windows and event handling to make the code samples smaller and more portable. All the OpenGL info is still there.The topics are presented in a logical order and explained well, and from skimming through the rest of the book it looks like pretty much everything I need is in this one book. I already feel like I am on my way to becoming a decent graphics programmer, because the book is helping me to actually *understand* what I'm doing and what is going on behind the scenes rather than just throwing code at me.I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for an in-depth yet easy to read reference and tutorial on modern graphics programming. The only reason I'm giving four stars rather than five is that as of this writing the full source code is apparently still not available :(

I had started learning OpenGL as a part of my university degree and this book is helpful so far. However, some parts of the code given in this book are little bit confusing. Overall is really good.

Covers the latest OpenGL spec. The is very little author written framework or wrappers that plagued the last OpenGL SuperBible. Any such code is explained. I'll be using this book for undergraduate labs.