Catching up with new OpenGL features

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1 comment, last by Glass_Knife 11 years, 6 months ago
I spent some time, years ago, when first learning how to program, learning DirectX and OpenGL.

A lot of time has past, and many new features have been introduced, discovered, removed, etc.

For someone who learned all about this stuff 10 years ago, could you recommend the current
books available that delve into all the new things, without boring me to death with the simple
things that I already know?

Are the red and blue books still relevant, or should I be looking at something different.
If there is a "bible" for the shading language, what is it?

Thanks,

I think, therefore I am. I think? - "George Carlin"
My Website: Indie Game Programming

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/indieprogram

My Book: http://amzn.com/1305076532

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I, like you, studied OpenGL about ten years ago and recently was looking for good materials to update me, without starting from scratch. I had surprisingly little luck locating a textbook that had the topics I was looking for. This book got my attention, but I felt like it covered too much of what I already knew. I have read other books in the Morgan-Kauffman series, though, and they were pretty great!

I know its not a textbook, but since you are in the same boat I was in, I would very highly recommend these tutorials. Even if you arent using Linux, there is actually nothing Linux Specific about any of the tutorials other than the fact that there are no Visual Studio project files. Moreover I recently spoke with the author, who told me they are working on creating Visual Studio Project files so the tutorials won't be linux specific anymore.

These tutorials are extremely good and very concise. I would even suggest starting at tutorial 1. The author never uses any immediate mode rendering. He uses vertex buffer objects and shaders from the start. So even in tutorial 1 you should be learning new stuff. The first few tutorials are very brief, and they get longer as the topics get more complex.

The author also constructs a lot of wrapper classes and essentially builds a graphics engine during the course of the tutorials. I am up to Tutorial 33 and I couldn't be happier with how much I've learned. Needless to say, I'm all about these tutorials!

The only criticism I could make other than the Visual Studio Project files not being available (yet) is that the tutorials use a left-handed coordinate system, while OpenGL tutorials (from my experience) are traditionally right handed. Can be confusing if you choose to combine techniques from other online tutorials or textbooks.
Thanks for the information about the tutorials. I will check them out. I do find it interesting how quickly you can fall out-of-knowledge in a subject like graphics in such a short period of time. Perhaps I should just dive in and start learning again.

I think, therefore I am. I think? - "George Carlin"
My Website: Indie Game Programming

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/indieprogram

My Book: http://amzn.com/1305076532

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