So far all the books I’ve seen are only v1.1 
I’m almost done reading the guide, but the one I have only talks about v1.1… Is there a link to an online version that talks about OpenGL 1.2 or 1.3 as well?
Thanks,
Luke
BTW, I promise, no more questions today 
Sitting right in front of me on my desk is the OpenGL Red Book for OpenGL Version 1.2…
Wow, you’re impressing me :-)))
But it has nothing to do with my question
Luke
Originally posted by BigShooter:
But it has nothing to do with my question
It has everything to do with your question. Why don’t you just ask for a copy of [insert thousand dollar modeller/renderer here] while you’re at it.
Hmmm, I’ve notivced that OpenGL programming guide v1.1 is in a lot of places on the web. It looks like it’s freely available. So I was hiping that v1.2 and 1.3 of the book would be too, that’s all.
Luke
Originally posted by BigShooter:
I’ve notivced that OpenGL programming guide v1.1 is in a lot of places on the web.
But it is still copyrighted material. If you are serious about learning OpenGL I suggest you go and pick up a copy.
[This message has been edited by roffe (edited 07-31-2003).]
From the looks of it, it seems that the most recent book (3rd edition) is only up to v.1.2 of OpenGL, that is a bit not up to date
I don’t mind spending money on books, in fact, I 've spent over $1000 this year on programming books. But, I refuse to spend moeny on a book that isn’t up to date Yet, I’ve read second edition and I must admit that the book is really good. It’s just that I wish it covered OpenGL up to at least 1.3, not to mention 1.4.
I don’t know what it is with OpenGL books, but there’s just so few of them and none of them is uptodate…,
Cheers,
Luke
Originally posted by BigShooter:
It’s just that I wish it covered OpenGL up to at least 1.3, not to mention 1.4.
AFAIK, 1.2 is the last one available. If you really need to know what is different look in specs. From a programming perspective most people assume Opengl 1.1 and use extensions. So what it all comes down to is some extensions that gets included into the core/other major change and whoopa, you have a new Opengl version. To learn how to use these you have several options. Check out the many tutorials on the web,extension specs themselves or buy a copy of the newly released Opengl extension book.
Unlike DirectX, if you learn OpenGL 1.1, you won’t have to totally relearn it again to use 1.4 functions. You just have to learn what those new functions do, which can be done by reading the spec, as has been stated.
Conversely, if you learned Direct3D 5, you’d pretty much have to throw out everything you learned if you wanted to use Direct3D 8, as there were pretty dramatic changes.
I got mine for $15.00 US from e-bay. Check into it.
OK, thanks a bunch. eBay is probably a great cheap means of buying a book. Hmmm… I wonder why I didn’t think of that before
Thanks,
Luke
Originally posted by Deiussum:
[b]Unlike DirectX, if you learn OpenGL 1.1, you won’t have to totally relearn it again to use 1.4 functions. You just have to learn what those new functions do, which can be done by reading the spec, as has been stated.
Conversely, if you learned Direct3D 5, you’d pretty much have to throw out everything you learned if you wanted to use Direct3D 8, as there were pretty dramatic changes.[/b]
Deiussum, is it true that
OpenGL 1.4 = OpenGL 1.0 + extentions?
If not, can you give an example please.
Thank you.
That’s true in that nothing that was part of the core in 1.0 has changed in 1.4, but many addition things have been added to it. Much of the time, a new feature will start out as an extension, but then be promoted to the core of the next version of OpenGL due to popularity/standardization.
Incremental revisions of OpenGL are always a superset of older versions. Your OpenGL code should never break moving to a newer card you never have to throw away your older knowledge. OpenGL has less baggage because stuff that’s added is chosen very carefully. Core capabilities get added, but this is good because extensions are not guaranteed to be supported on all hardware or even on future hardware. If it’s in the core OpenGL you can use it on all hardware claiming to support that version of OpenGL and all future hardware claiming to support that or higher revisions of OpenGL, at least that is how it has worked to date. There is some talk that OpenGL 2.0 might discard some of the older outmoded baggage.
Sometimes the ‘best’ way to do things changes for example one of the things that has changed the most over various core revisions of OpenGL is the way geometry is sent to the graphics card. The very original method is fast and supported but new better & faster methods designed to exploit DMAs without have been added to the core and should be used in most circumstances. OTOH display lists have always been supported and will also do the job for most static geometry even on the most modern hardware with the latest OpenGL version.