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The OpenGL Extensions Guide
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Author: Eric Lengyel
List Price: $59.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 1584502940
Publisher: Charles River Media (July, 2003)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 9,907
Average Customer Rating: 4 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 4 out of 5
Good reference, but slightly disappointing
I've often been frustrated by the fact that it's often hard to find good documentation for OpenGL extensions. The information in the extension registry, as well as in the latest OpenGL spec (for extensions that have been promoted to the core) is generally intended for OpenGL implementers, not OpenGL developers, so there usually isn't much about how or why you would use the extension. Sometimes, you can find papers and demos from one of the hardware vendors, such as Nvidia or ATI, but more often than not, you're left figuring it out on your own.So when I heard about this book, I was really looking forward to it. Given the high quality of the author's other works, I expected it to immediately take a place on my desk. This book is essentially an expansion of the information contained in the extension registry. It's considerably more user-friendly, the explanations are more detailed, and it conveniently groups the extensions by their functional area. However, it really doesn't discuss how or why you would use each extension in a game or graphics application. Nor does it include any demos, or even sample code. These factors keep the book from being as useful as it could have been. Overall, this is a good book, and it provides a great reference for the extensions it covers, but it could have gone farther with showing you how to use them.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Excellent reference!
Finally! this book is a long overdue alternative to reading the raw extension specs on opengl.org. It covers all of the extensions I've ever needed, and a few more that I didn't even know existed. The only thing I can complain about is that is doesn't have anything on pbuffers, but don't get me wrong, this book is nice and meaty and is a great resource for opengl programmers. Definitely recommended!
Rating: 3 out of 5
Good as reference, but hard to learn from
The reason why I only give this book 3 stars is that the book can only be used as a reference to OpenGL extensions. There is no demos or even source-code provided with the book, which makes the book extremely hard to learn from because you won't find any working code, just each extension described. Being an experienced OpenGL programmer this is not a huge problem for me, but since I believe many beginner OpenGL programmers find this books topic interesting, I thought I would warn you. Eric Lengyel is a great writer and his Mathematics for Game Programmers is a must-have. So before buying this book, please make sure that you are skilled enough to learn from a reference-book with no demos!
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