Hi, I have a fairly good understanding of C++ and I made a couple of small little games in SFML. I decided to move onto OpenGL now and I was wondering whether I should pickup and get the OpenGL Programming Guide 8th Edition Version 4.3? I want your feedback on the book whether it's suitable for someone who's trying to learn OpenGL because I don't want to buy it, then find out that it's horrible and that I wasted my cash on it.

If this book is bad, then what are your suggestions to learning modern opengl? I dislike NeHe tutorials since they're old and deprecated. Also, if there's any other books that you suggest I should get then please leave a comment below or even a website to check out.

Thanks.

I will strongly recommend http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/index.html. I am using it and it is way more in-depth than anything else I've found on the internet, I have bought the OpenGL Superbible but I never really use it anymore

I'd start with arcsynthesis online book too. Then see if you need a book or not.

I will strongly recommend http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/index.html. I am using it and it is way more in-depth than anything else I've found on the internet, I have bought the OpenGL Superbible but I never really use it anymore

Btw can this book be downloaded?

Yep, if you follow the instructions to download the sources, you'll find in there a pdf version too.

Hey there.

I would recommend the OpenGL SuperBible as a great learning resource for modern OpenGL programming.

Having learned OpenGL 2.1 with an older edition of the OpenGL programming guide, I found it difficult to understand which features

were deprecated in newer OpenGL versions and how new features like FBOs are used correctly. Lots of outdated OpenGL tutorials

on the internet contribute to this confusion.

The OpenGL SuperBible teaches you modern shader-driven OpenGL programming and omits deprecated but yet supported

stuff like glBegin()/glEnd(). You will learn how to use FBOs, VAOs and geometry shaders, for example.

I wouldn't recommend any book (or other source material) focussing on 4.3 right now precisely because AMD don't have full GL 4.3 drivers available yet (neither do Intel). The contents of the book may very well be useless for you on account of this, and even if they're not, they will be useless for a significant proportion of the people you distribute your program to. There's also the small (or maybe not so small) matter of Apple not supporting any GL_VERSION higher than 3.2.

Of course, if neither of these conditions apply then by all means go for 4.3, but otherwise sticking with 3.2 is going to be a safer and more compatible option.

Thanks, but just a quick question (probably a stupid one), how do you learn from these tutorials/books (for example, arcsynthesis) if they don't give you a small snippet of code and explain it? I'm looking at arcsynthesis and basically he just wants you to read the whole source code, which also has a framework in place, which I then need to scavenge for and read about how his framework works.

I'm sort of used to tutorials teaching things step by step and explaining snippets of code (coming from Flash). Also, I looked at the superbible and it teaches you their opengl wrapper instead of opengl until later into the chapters.

If you don't like these tutorials & books then try these:

http://www.opengl-tutorial.org/

http://www.rastertek.com/tutgl40.html

I think you could say that they're step by step.

I wouldn't recommend any book (or other source material) focussing on 4.3 right now precisely because AMD don't have full GL 4.3 drivers available yet (neither do Intel)

Actually, AMD have recently added support for 4.3 http://support.amd.com/us/kbarticles/Pages/AMDCatalyst13-4WINReleaseNotes.aspx

Thanks, but just a quick question (probably a stupid one), how do you learn from these tutorials/books (for example, arcsynthesis) if they don't give you a small snippet of code and explain it? I'm looking at arcsynthesis and basically he just wants you to read the whole source code, which also has a framework in place, which I then need to scavenge for and read about how his framework works.

I'm sort of used to tutorials teaching things step by step and explaining snippets of code (coming from Flash). Also, I looked at the superbible and it teaches you their opengl wrapper instead of opengl until later into the chapters.

I haven't tried the downloaded version, but the online version of arcsynthesis does have small snippets that are fully explained. Atleast, I did find it easy enough to understand, even when using it with OpenTK.