Elysian Shadows

short wrote:My professor assigned the seventh edition of the opengl redbook as required reading for the class.

I looked and it still used the fixed function pipeline (so I didn't bother), and even in class he mentioned once that the book just isn't that good.

Amazon let's you pre-order the eight edition, but I found something I am liking much more.

I found an online book, that seems to be VERY good. It's teaching me how to program opengl 3.3 and above.

Here's the link:

http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/

Take a look, I'm learning immensely from it. There's a lot different, especially with vertex and fragment shaders. It's like a whole new world :D

The seventh edition of the opengl redbook is a reference to opengl 3.0, it covers both ways of doing things because it is exactly that, a reference, and it must cover the entire API. Now if you want to learn the "new" way of doing things (it's not really that new at this point :P ), then i suggest the book OpenGL Superbible, 5th edition. Here's a link to the book's site, you can find it on amazon: http://www.starstonesoftware.com/OpenGL/.

I'm not sure if it even uses fixed function, it's been some time since i read it, but it is a very good book and focuses on the programmable pipeline. One bad thing about it is that it uses it's own framework for most examples, but once you get off the ground and in to the more advanced stuff, you learn how to do it on your own. And trust me, keep the red book, it's a very useful reference to have around, and make sure to get the orange book as well (GLSL reference) since you are interested in shaders. I hope this helps