OpenGL Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Version 1.4, Fourth Edition

Rating:
Summary: Learn Computer Graphics
Review: A nifty explanation of practical graphics programming. Not so long ago (well, the 80s), if you wanted to do computer graphics with, say, a light source and Gourard shading, the only recourse was a $100 000 Evans and Sutherland machine. Plus, any code was in the latter's native graphics library, further increasing your dependence on that company. Along came SGI, who basically then took the workstation graphics market in the 90s.

One of the good things SGI did was to promote OpenGL as a set of graphics routines. Gradually, with each iteration of OpenGL, it moved from a dependence on SGI hardware and IRIX (their version of Unix) to a software interface that frees you from a given hardware platform. This, and the sheer functional sweep of the graphics capabilities described in the book, may make OpenGL the easiest way for anyone to learn and apply graphics. The book describes such necessities (which is what these have become nowadays) as texture mapping, NURBS, tesselations and motion blur.

The book covers topics up to, but not including, ray tracing. The book is an ideal companion to a pure graphics text, that goes into the theory. The emphasis here is on showing how you can apply that theory, without having to code elementary operations from scratch. The authors do describe some theory, but only the pragmatic minimum necessary to motivate an explanation of the library's routines. In other words, you will not get drowned in maths!

Rating:
Summary: Best book
Review: I've bought this book from here because out here in the netherlands it's about $ 44 US more.
I'm know at the lightning chapter, and it's quite easy to follow(as 14 year old dutch boy).
To bad i don't understand all the mathematic things but that's not really nescary if your not using light.
So i recomment this book to evry beginning opengl programmer.

Rating:
Summary: Good book but no vertex,fragment introduction.
Review: I've bought this book which is good for learning OpenGL 1.4, but be carefull if you want to learn vertex,fragment programs: contrary to what is written on the cover, this book doesn't talk at all about vertex,fragment programs.

The sentence "Most importantly, the ARB vertex and fragment program extension is introduced." is an editorial mistake..
To learn to program shaders, you'll need another book..