OpenGL book purchase help

[Stray_Coder]

Hi everybody, I'm currently thinking about purchasing the OpenGL Super Bible (Fourth Edition). However, I'm not positive on whether it will be a good investment or not on the note that I've heard that the 3.0 specification will make all previous information on the API invalid. Is this true ? Will information from the current specification still be worth touching upon ? Or should I just wait to purchase a text book on the 3.0 specification ?

Any help would be appreciated, thanks

[sqrt[-1]]

Yes the new OpenGL 3.0 will be completely new in the syntax and methods you call. (whenever it gets released)

But it depends, do you want to start coding NOW or do you want to wait 6-12 months for a spec, then drivers, then finally books?

The other thing to note is that the rendering concepts will probably not change much in the new spec (still bind vertex/index buffers, bind vertex/fragment shaders, issue render calls) so if you are new to graphics programming there is a lot of generic stuff to learn that can transfer to other graphics API's (OGL3.0, DX10 etc) If you do decide to buy the book, it is probably recommended you ignore any fixed function(non-shader) stuff if you want to be closer to OpenGL3.0.

[Sik the hedgehog]

And anyways, as far as I know, OpenGL 3.0 will still retain the legacy stuff, so programs made for OpenGL 2.1 should still work. Just the legacy and the new stuff won't be useable together. And until OpenGL 3.0 is widely adopted, and properly, it'll take time. I recall that there are still a lot of cards stuck with OpenGL 1.5 (and I've even found a card with OpenGL 1.3!).