Opengl Programming Guide: The Official Guide to Learning Opengl, Version 1.1

Rating:
Summary: Good book.. But I have better.
Review: This book does a good job getting you started and is good for a reference, but I think it focuses way to much on GLUT. Personally I don't like or use GLUT, so maybe I'm biased. If you're on a Win32 platform.. Get the OpenGL SuperBible. It's even better than this one.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on the use of OpenGL
Review: This book gives the reader a thorough understanding for using the OpenGL API. In combination with the reference manual the reader will have a complete reference library for OpenGL development. The only thing I found lacking was coverage of some of the more advanced topics, such as stenciling. I also have the Windows 95/NT volume but found it covered basically the same material as this book.

Rating:
Summary: A great generic platform OpenGL book
Review: This is a wonderful OpenGL book. I especially like the fact that it is specifically written to be platform independant. Other books fail because they try to concentrate on one type of platform, like Win95/98/NT. It does use GLUT but it uses it as a tool to allow the reader to learn the concepts and get right to work with the fun stuff rather than tinkering with the specifics of your OS. This book is especially welcome to Linux programmers because of the fact that it doesn't concentrate on the Windows API and instead uses GLUT to work across all platforms.

Rating:
Summary: good
Review: Well, this book is pretty good. It explains some nice math calculations for things if you wish to do them yourself (which i think is a good idea). If you're like me, you've probably downloaded some demo effects done in openGL, and if they're fullscreen... they're usually extremely slow (no openGL ICD). You really shouldn't be discouraged, this book tells you how to do things the easy way, straight openGL. It isn't a bad idea for just learning and whatnot. But you obviously won't reach fast fps by doing so, espically in fullscreen modes. If you program Pure win32api, you'll have to learn on your own how to set the pixel format and establish windows, they're not covered in this book because it's win32 functions, and as they say in the book... they want to be general enough for you to do them in any platform, that's why they cover GLUT in this book... mostly to assign camera angles, windows, ideling..... what have you. The best thing you can do is use CreateWindow() and SetPixelFormat() to do openGL in windows. It's easy after that, get the hDC of the dialog, and establish a HGLRC and start drawing... down forget to releast the DC in the end... Back to the book, it's very good for all ranges of programmers, but use it mostly for reference... unless you wanna overuse GLUT like this book does. And as for GLAUX... it's better to learn 3d geometric object handling on your own... but whatever you think...