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OpenGL Programming Guide 143

Posted by timothy from the robotic-pleasure dept.
Martin Ecker writes "The Red Book, also known as the OpenGL Programming Guide, is back in its fifth edition. It received the name Red Book because of the nice red book cover, and possibly also because it has remained the standard introductory text on the OpenGL graphics API for years, and always referring to it as "OpenGL Programming Guide" is too long. This fifth edition now also covers new features introduced with versions 1.5 and 2.0 of the OpenGL standard. So let me take you on a tour through the pages of this book to see what it has to offer." Ecker's review continues below.
OpenGL Programming Guide (5th Ed.) - The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Version 2
author Dave Shreiner, Mason Woo, Jackie Neider, Tom Davis
pages 838
publisher Addison-Wesley Publishing
rating 8
reviewer Martin Ecker
ISBN 0321335732
summary A very complete and thorough introduction to OpenGL


I should mention that the last edition I read of the Red Book was the first edition, and a lot of material has been added to the book in the meantime. Just as the first edition, however, the fifth edition is still incredibly complete and thorough. It contains explanations of pretty much every feature of OpenGL, even the rarely used ones. You want to know about the new occlusion queries added to OpenGL recently? It's in this book. You want to know about the accumulation buffer and its uses? It's in this book. You want to know about the (mostly deprecated) use of indexed color buffers? It's in this book. The only thing the book does not cover in detail is vertex and fragment shaders because they have their own book, the Orange Book (aka The OpenGL Shading Language) -- see my previous Slashdot review.

The Red Book is aimed at the beginning to intermediate graphics programmer who is not yet familiar with OpenGL. It assumes a basic background in computer graphics theory and working knowledge of the C programming language. The book consists of 15 chapters and 9 appendices that together span approximately 800 pages.

The first chapter gives a brief introduction to the basic concepts of OpenGL and describes the rendering pipeline model used in the API. GLUT, a cross-platform library that allows easily creating OpenGL applications, is also shortly discussed together with a program that shows GLUT in action. The following chapters proceed to explain the basic geometric primitives, such as lines and polygons, supported by OpenGL and how to render them in different positions and from different viewpoints using the various OpenGL matrix stacks. The authors also discuss here the basics of using colors, fixed-function lighting, framebuffer blending, and fog.

Chapter seven contains a description of display lists, a unique feature of OpenGL that allows to store OpenGL API calls for efficient multiple use later on in a program. Chapter eight then moves on to discuss what an image is for OpenGL, which brings us straight to chapter nine on texture mapping, one of the largest chapters in the book. This chapter discusses everything you need to know on textures, from specifying texture images in uncompressed and compressed form to applying textures to primitives using the various kinds of supported texture filters. Also depth textures and their application as shadow maps are presented.

In chapter ten the authors discuss the buffers that make up the framebuffer, such as the color buffer, depth buffer, and stencil buffer. This chapter summarizes some of the things already presented in the earlier chapters and then describes the various framebuffer operations in more detail. Also the accumulation buffer and its uses, such as motion blur and depth of field effects, are discussed. Chapter eleven and twelve are on the tools provided by GLU, the GL utility library, in particular tesselators, quadrics, evaluators, and NURBs. GLU is nowadays rarely ever used in production code, so these chapters mostly demonstrate just how complete the Red Book is in its coverage of OpenGL. This also applies to chapter thirteen on selection and feedback, which are rarely used features, mostly because of the lack of hardware acceleration.

Finally, chapter fourteen is a collection of topics that didn't fit into the other chapters, such as error handling and the OpenGL extension mechanism. Additionally, this chapter presents various higher level techniques and tricks, for example how to implement a simple fade effect, how to render antialiased text, and some examples of using the stencil buffer. The final chapter of the book - newly added in the fifth addition -- is a short introduction to the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL, for short). Even though the OpenGL API functions required to use GLSL are presented, this is only a quick overview of how programmable shaders are used in OpenGL. For a more detailed description of GLSL the reader is referred to the Orange Book.

The book closes with quite a few appendices on the order of operations in the OpenGL rendering pipeline, the state variables that can be queried, the interaction of OpenGL with the operating system-specific windowing systems, a brief discussion of homogeneous coordinates as used in OpenGL, and some programming tips. Also a reference of the built-in GLSL variables and functions is included, which is a bit odd considering that the Red Book actually doesn't really concentrate on programmable shaders or GLSL. It's a good reference nevertheless.

The book contains a large number of images and diagrams, all of them in black and white except for 32 color plates in the middle of the book. The illustrations are of high quality and generally help make the explained concepts and techniques easier to understand. Most of the color plates depict spheres, teapots, and other simple geometric objects, so they aren't overly eye-catching but do serve their purpose of showing what can be achieved with OpenGL.

The Red Book remains the definitive guide to learning OpenGL. Whenever someone asks me "What book should I read first to learn OpenGL?" this is the book I refer them to. Apart from being a good introduction, it also contains many interesting tips and tricks that make the experienced OpenGL programmer come back to it often. If you've read through this book in its entirety you pretty much know everything there is to know about OpenGL.

Martin Ecker has been involved in real-time graphics programming for more than 9 years and works as a games developer for casual arcade games. In his rare spare time he works on a graphics-related open source project called XEngine. You can purchase OpenGL Programming Guide (5th Ed.) - The Official Guide to Learning OpenGL, Version 2 from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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OpenGL Programming Guide

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  • Microsoft (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There's still the problem of Windows Vista making DirectX much faster than OpenGL.

    • Re:Microsoft (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by shis-ka-bob ( 595298 )
      reference please ....

    • Re:Microsoft (Score:1, Insightful)

      by myukew ( 823565 )
      it's always better to install proper driver for your graphics card if you want full performance. same for directx performance btw...

    • Re:Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)

      by Decimal Dave ( 411182 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @03:45PM (#13466448)
      Microsoft's OGL wrapper for DirectX does add a lot of overhead, but it doesn't matter - hardly anyone uses that. Normally under Windows you use the OpenGL implementation that comes from the graphics chipset manufacturer. NVIDIA, ATI, 3DLabs, etc. all have their own, which can be very fast without any sort of DirectX involvement. These are generally much more up to data than MS OGL anyway.
      • but using one of those will disable your hardware accelerated windows desktop candy thingy's.

        • Re:Microsoft (Score:3, Insightful)

          by 2008 ( 900939 )
          A gamer craves not these things.

          Seriously, not only are games full-screen most of the time, but I would much rather have my graphics card working on my framerate than transparent jiggly menus.
          • There comes a point when your framerate is basically irrelevant. The human eye and brain can only capture and process about 26 images per second. So once you get past about 30 frames/second, any additional frames that are rendered are basically useless. They're just not observed by the human vision. So getting a few extra frames per second once you're already at 180+ fps is a pointless task, in practicality.

            • Re:Microsoft (Score:3, Informative)

              by Edgewize ( 262271 )
              False. Additional frames pass too quickly to be perceived as individual images, but they still add to the perception of smooth motion.
              • Up until a point. And that is usually around 30 frames per second for most individuals, which is indeed above the perceivable ~26 fps. An increase from 185 fps to 189 fps will not be noticed as either a single image nor as better flowing animation.

                • And even if the human eye would be able to see faster changes it makes no sense to render more frames than the monitor refresh rate allows it to display.
                • ### And that is usually around 30 frames per second for most individuals

                  Detecting a difference between 30fps and 60fps is pretty easy for basically any gamer, detecting a difference between 60fps and 100fps already gets a bit more difficult, but is still doable for many people. So up until you have at the very least 60fps, better 100fps, constantly in all situations I wouldn't call the framerate irrelevant, sure, a game gets playable much earlier, but that wasn't the point. Everything above 100fps gets rath
              • You are both wrong... It really bothers me that every time someone mentions fps, someone will come with the clueless statement about how ~30fps is what we are able to perceive.

                For computer generated graphics, without -motion blur-, ~72 fps is what you should aim for.
                Why 72 fps?
                Google it up on the net. (Wikipedia doesn't seem to be quite so good on this)
                It's all down to how fast signals from the screen, hits your eyes, signals from eyes reach your brain and your brain interprets the signals as an image. Anyt
                • Good point.

                  The ~30 fps is the minimum below which you will start seeing individual frames. It doesn't mean that 30 is the best, if you look at the source with a corner of your eye, up to 70-75Hz you will still see the flickering. One can tell the difference between a 60Hz refresh rate on a monitor and 85Hz. Also if you stare at a Also, as you say, the motion blur will be there at 30 fps but that depends also on the fluorescence of the materials used. The same 30 fps on CRT will look different than 30 fps

                • If you want 70 fps, your monitor better be running at lease 70 Hz. Most monitors run around 75 Hz. So any FPS rating above 75 is probably useless to just about everyone. Unless you have a really good monitor. You are right though about your brain being able to see it. I can tell when a computer monitor is set to 60 Hz. Drives me crazy.
            • one of the things that @26 fps doesn't cover is the motion blur that would normally be a part of a 'moving' image. massive frame rates cover that part up. given how fast I've seen some of these games play, the possiblity of seeing the blur vs. finding out something hit you between frames, might make a difference.

              the bit that confuses me sometimes is that I don't recall ever seeing a monitor with better than a 120Hz frame rate... the one I'm working with now only goes as far as 90. is this not a barrier?
              • Indeed, monitors with refresh rates that are less than the FPS being displayed are indeed a technical limitation. But assuming that the technology is, in the future, capable of displaying 180+ frames per second, there is still the human limiting factor way back at approx. 30 frames/second.

                • persistence of vision is closer to 18 fps, the only reason film goes faster (24) is for the optical audio track... for tv it was 30 (25 for europe et al.) due to the speed of the house current, ((60Hz/50Hz) though this is no longer the case.)
                  (film is projected with a double shutter rate to appear at 48 to reduce flicker, but this of course does nothing for the motion.)

                  but the fact remains that your eye does not see in fps, it sees in continuous time. just that the response rate of the average cone is rathe

                  • Re:not quite, (Score:2, Interesting)

                    by Renegrade ( 698801 )

                    What I would like to know is, if your game is running at a framre rate 3x what your monitor can display, are you getting a composite image every 3 frames? or just every third frame is being shown on screen... if the former, that would be pretty amazing, if the latter, so what.

                    You get a "composite" frame, as in the first third is current frame-2, the second third is current frame-1, and the final third is current frame. It's called "tearing" and looks ugly. The solution, of course, is vertical syncing (o

            • Actually, the human eye (and optic nervous system) can indeed process events at more than 26 fps. However, the so-called "persistence of vision" prevents the discrimination of distinct events that are too close in time. Biologists have measured the smallest time interval between events to be perceived independently to be roughly 10 milliseconds for the case of a flickering light (which corresponds to 100 Hz).

              Note that "frame rate" is different than "flicker rate". Even though movies are filmed at 24 fps,
        • Why would it do such a stupid thing? Does Windows not display video if you aren't using a MS video card? Then why would it shut it down if you aren't using MS drivers?

      • Re:Microsoft (Score:2, Informative)

        by JourneyExpertApe ( 906162 )
        I'm not entirely sure that this is the case. The news item currently at the top of opengl.org is:

        Full performance OpenGL under Windows Vista Aero - Contact your hardware and software manufacturers Microsoft's current plan for OpenGL on Windows Vista is to layer OpenGL over Direct3D in order to use OpenGL with a composited desktop to obtain the Aeroglass experience. If an an application runs using an OpenGL ICD - the desktop compositor will switch off - significantly degrading the user experience. This i

      • Microsoft's OGL wrapper for DirectX does add a lot of overhead,

        Is it even technically possible and/or has anyone considered constructing wrappers so that DirectX API may overlay an OpenGL implementation?

        Or should we abandon DirectX and OpenGL for this Cg I hear about?

        • Cg doesn't replace DirectX nor OpenGL. It replaces the native shader languages used in these two however (HLSL and GLSL respectively).

          If you do an application with Cg you will most likely use OpenGL or D3D for the rest of the engine.
    • Making OpenGL slower is. If Microsoft can achieve real technical gains in DirectX, more power to them. If they're hobbling OpenGL, that's a different story. If, for instance, they're accepting optimized drivers from the hardware vendors for DirectX, but refusing to accept optimized OpenGL drivers for inclusion in Vista, that's playing dirty. If they're getting -no- optimized drivers from the vendors, but taking it upon themselves to make DirectX faster, I'm not sure how to take that. Does anybody know
    • It appears everyone is forgetting that this is to allow the desktop renderer to use DirectX in a fairly exclusive mode. This is good for the desktop as switching between OGL/DX contexts is a big hit. And of course, should you want you can get a third party OGL driver (NV/ATI likely) that will fully accelerate your OGL stuff, but disable your eye candy desktop.
    • The 'problem' really just stems from the fact that video hardware is becoming an operating system managed resource, instead of a thin interface to an essentially unmanaged device. DirectX is becoming a much more important part of the operating system now that the entire GUI is built on top of it. You can no longer just give applications full access to the video resources through OpenGL and the driver.

      Complaining about this is like complaining about how 32-bit x86 operating systems rendered DOS4GW use

  • What about this site? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by irtza ( 893217 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @02:48PM (#13466019) Homepage
    How does this new version compare to this site: The red book [rush3d.com]?? Is it worth the money to buy it if you are a true beginner with a decent C background, but little prior work with 3D graphics? Or would it be fair to say that the online book would suffice and that a API reference for changes and updates would allow you to do simple rendering?

    • Re:What about this site? (Score:5, Informative)

      by pstreck ( 558593 ) * on Friday September 02, 2005 @02:52PM (#13466051)
      thats the 1st edition up there. If you are serious about writing with the opengl api, I highly reccomend getting the latest revision.
    • I don't know about you, but when I'm studying a complicated topic, be it programming or something in the real world, I prefer to have a real book to read, which I can hilight, post-it-note and carry into the toilet with me for deep thinking time.

      Also, I'm not a cheap bastard. The book's good, so I paid for it.

      • Sorry about the rant.

        To answer your actual question, you *do* need a relatively modern API reference, if you're studying from the 1.1 spec ( I learned off the 1.2 spec ). But the thing is, OpenGL is very well backwards compatible, so code written for the first edition will work fine on a modern OpenGL 2 driver.

        Still, but it: It's a good book. I went from *zero* opengl experience to My mediocre game [zakariya.net] in 1.5 years, with a robotics simulator in the interim.

    • I would be curious to know how the newer edition stands up to the old edition. OpenGL programming is very math ("maths" for the UK) intensive (canonical view volumes, vectors, etc). Of course, game mechanics are complicated enough.

      If you are trying to learn OpenGL, Neon Helium [gamedev.net] is more useful (I have an older edition of the red book).

      • NeHe not so great (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I don't recommend using NeHe any more. At one point, it was a great resource, but it has gone far downhill.

        For one thing, the sample code is pretty crappily written, sadly outdated, and makes use of obsolete stuff like glaux.

        For another, the maintainer has moved on...Gamedev.net is (kinda) maintaining the site now, and not much is happening in the way of new tutorials.

  • Try before you buy... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02, 2005 @02:49PM (#13466028)
    Book is available online here (and a few other places/formats, try google):

    http://fly.cc.fer.hr/~unreal/theredbook/ [cc.fer.hr]

    This is an older version, but still a very good grounding in the basics of interactive 3d graphics.

  • The Red Book is not the Blue Book (Score:5, Informative)

    by webbroberts ( 249675 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @02:55PM (#13466068)
    The reason they call it the red book is to distinguish it from the blue book, which is the OpenGL reference manual.

    http://www.opengl.org/documentation/blue_book_1.0/ [opengl.org]

  • Figures (Score:3, Funny)

    by iSlak ( 615695 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @02:57PM (#13466081)
    Damn it! I just bought the 4th edition two days ago on Amazon.
    • I did the same thing when the 4th came out. I bought the 3rd from Barnes & Noble (locally) 3-4 days before the 4th came out. Although I had the ability to return it. Don't worry excessively though, the 4th is still impressive and recent (only 1.5 yrs old?) and covers tha majority of OpenGL functionality. If you wait until the most recent Blue Book comes out (the Reference) you should be able to function just fine.

  • Free version (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02, 2005 @02:57PM (#13466083)
    You can get this book in PDF or HTML for free from here [opengl.org]. Obviously it's as up to date as this edition but probably good enough for most beginners.
  • From the review it just basically looks like the last edition but with a little bit added for GLSL. I think most people that are interested have already read the Red Book and many other OpenGL texts so it seems kinda unneeded. What would be really interesting is a book about implementing Shaders in OpenGL or other advance features coming in OpenGL 2.0.

  • games (Score:3, Funny)

    by BillFarber ( 641417 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @02:59PM (#13466098)
    Maybe the people who complain about the lack of quality games [slashdot.org] should put the book to use.
    • I don't think that graphics is the most important problem with latest games and many comments to the story you mentioned agree with that.
      • Yeah you're right. Compared to making a fun game the graphics part is easy. At least the technical side is, you still need skilled artists to get a good looking game regardless of the tech. Good gameplay takes longer and is more difficult than implementing the latest shaders and advanced physics. I can say that as someone who has written low level graphics code on Playstation 1 and 2, and then specialised in game and AI code.
      • Well, although graphics is not a problem with many of the blockbuster games of the day (quite the opposite, in fact), it could be said that graphics represent the biggest barrier to entry when it comes to indie and open source developers, who may have a great, fun idea.
        • Actually, I would have to say you are wrong. Most of my favourite games for my gamecube are actually some of the ones with the worst graphics. Viewtiful Joe, Zelda WW, Animal Crossing, Mario Sunshine. Mind you the graphics aren't terrible, but they definitely aren't the best thing available. I think there's still room for developers to put out stuff that's simple and addictive, and still make a pretty good profit. Remember, graphics cost money, if you spend less money on them, the money can go to other

  • That's not the red book! (Score:5, Funny)

    by merreborn ( 853723 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @03:03PM (#13466120) Journal
    I've seen "Hackers"! They use the Red Book to hack the Gibson.

    Also, hacking looks a lot like a bad screensaver. There's never any text editing or commandlines involved.

  • Save Some 1.57%! (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Save yourself some money by buying the book here and using the "secret" 1.57% A9 discount you get by using a9.com: OpenGL Programming Guide [amazon.com]
  • It contains explanations of pretty much every feature of OpenGL, even the rarely used ones.

    You would think, wouldn't you, that it would contain explanations of every feature of OpenGL? After all, if it's not in the book, should it be in the language?

    • First off, OpenGL isn't a language. Second off, just because somebody leaves something out of a book, you think they should remove the feature?! So, if I write an introductory C++ book, but don't mention everything in the STL, the whole STL should be removed?
      • Since the book is written and published by the OpenGL Review Board, yeah, it should contain every feature in the API. The 'Red Book' is not just an introductory book on OpenGL. The purpose of the Specification is to show someone how to write an implementation of OpenGL. The purpose of the Red Book is to show someone how to use any conforming implementation of OpenGL. IMO the parrent is correct, since the book is produced by OpenGLs governing body, it should cover everything. I'm not going to dispute with yo

  • Hard cover? (Score:3)

    by gr8_phk ( 621180 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @03:27PM (#13466311)
    Is this book available in hard cover?
  • As far as I'm concerned, the red book is "Applied Cryptography" [amazon.com]

  • Covers & Colors (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 02, 2005 @03:38PM (#13466408)
    The thing about these OpenGL books that makes them different from all the others on the market is that they are DEFINITIVE. They are put out by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board - who are the very people who design and update the API. If the books don't agree with the implementation - it's the implementation that's wrong!

    The full set are as follows:

    Red Book - Programming guide - chatty description which still has all of the arguments of all of the functions described within it. You *need* this book...expect to buy a new one every couple of years as the API evolves. Keep one copy at work and the last generation one at home...maybe keep the one before that in your car!

    Blue Book - Reference Manual - quite literally a set of 'man' pages printed out and bound together in a book. Useful if you like to read books instead of screens.

    Green Book - GLUT. Covers the GL Utility Toolkit. This is really rather unnecessary.

    Alpha Book - OpenGL programming for Windows. (It actually has a white cover...but since we had the RGB books, we needed Alpha to complete the set!)

    Orange Book - OpenGL shader language (GLSL). If you want to program at the cutting edge of realtime graphics, you'll be using shaders. It's written in a style broadly similar to the way the Red Book is written and is very readable.

    Finally, there is the OpenGL specification document. This has (AFAIK) never been put into print (which is a great shame - I'd buy it) - you can download it from www.opengl.org and it contains VERY detailed documentation of every function that goes far beyond any of the printed manuals - but which presumes you already know OpenGL pretty well. However, if you need to know the mathematical description of how OpenGL implementations are supposed to calculate the level of detail of your texture map...this is where you'll find that.

    Whilst all the other books are handy to have around, the RedBook is utterly essential to OpenGL programmers (even those of us who've been using it for the whole eleven years of it's life will find themselves referring to it often enough to warrant owning a copy). The nice thing about it is that it's very readable. You can open it at page 1 knowing nothing - and read through to the end and wind up having learned all of OpenGL - or you can pretend it's a set of man pages and use the (excellent) index to find a simple description of every function and it's arguments that's *NEARLY* as good as the Blue Book.
    • It looks like the "Alpha book" about wgl and also information about glx (the X-specific GL interface) have been added to the new Red book. They are in my copy of 5 but not in the version 3 copy I also have.

    • Why couldn't they just give the alpha book a clear cover. Would have been very fitting. Even better would be to print the entire book on transparancies. Would make reading a little hard though, as you could see the pages behind the one you're reading. Would make for an interesting book though.
  • Too bad OpenGL is getting crippled [opengl.org] in Windows Vista. By the time Vist is in full swng, OpelGL on windows can't possibly be as popular if it's performance is drained by the layering.

    • Re:Too Bad OpenGL Is Getting Crippled (Score:5, Informative)

      by brain007 ( 798589 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @04:33PM (#13466763) Homepage
      It's great that you jump on the freak out bandwagon. MS has tried to kill OpenGL before and they will try again. It's not going to be that big of a deal. OpenGL is used way more then DirectX for everything non-games (yes, there is a world out there that doesn't involve games). Here's a clue [gaminggroove.com] for everyone who is freaking out about this and doesn't mind having an open mind and learning a thing or two in the process.
    • Yeah, though OpenGL on Windows has always been crippled to some extent on Windows.

      For example, there is no way to change resolutions or switch to windowed/fullscreen without losing the entire context. It's a well known limitation of WGL. Of course, Direct3D has no such problem...

      Also, out-of-the-box video drivers never include OpenGL support, and basically everyone but nVidia and ATI ships worthless OpenGL support with their drivers anyway.
    • By the time Vist is in full swng, OpelGL on windows can't possibly be as popular if it's performance is drained by the layering.

      By the time Vista is in full swing (2010?), no one will care about OpenGL performance on Windows, because they already switched to Linux and/or OS X Intel, both of which happen to have great OpenGL support.
    • OpenGL will be around as long as lead figures such as Carmack desire to use them. John has expressed frustration with some of the OpenGL API, but currently has no plans (at least publicly stated) to drop development with it. It's pretty safe to say with the position he and other large developers have over Windows gaming, Microsoft would never ignore support for it. To do so would be financially hazardous, why they push Direct3D is beyond me. What do they care what API developers are using for games for
  • Has anyone actually read the Red Book? WTF is GL, or Open GL, or an API? What the hell does any of that have to do with the adventures of Frodo, or Bilbo.

    I know - bad joke, but I just HAD to say it. The little elves in my head whisper evil things.
  • Funny I thought that the Red Book refereed to all those nice free technical bookies that IBM has been providing for years.

    Or is that Aussies used car prices ..

  • Everyone already knows the Red Book is the Postscript Language Reference.

    http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/book s.htm

  • I did the cover for the Red Book (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Thagg ( 9904 ) <thadbeier@gmail.com> on Friday September 02, 2005 @04:58PM (#13466892) Journal
    I had originally wanted to make a Lego dinosaur, but the people in charge at SGI had thought that perhaps that was a message that they didn't want to put out there.

    Anyway, if you're wondering, the idea of the globe is that you can make the whole world out of little tiny pieces -- which seems like OpenGL to me. OpenGL is a great library, beautifully orthogonal, simple, and consistent, just the right thing for building 3D applications.

    And, btw, I think that the Google logo looks a whole lot like the OpenGL on the table in the book cover, but...hey, whatever.

    Thad Beier

  • Red Book == Postscript (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sebastopol ( 189276 ) on Friday September 02, 2005 @05:34PM (#13467066) Homepage
    My googling for jargon revealed that the Red Book is really a Postscript manual.

    What gives?

  • So the Red Book is going to continue down a path focusing on the fixed-function pipeline...

    I had such high expectations of the next Red Book. I was hoping for a more modern approach to OpenGL. What a shame.

    I'll wait for the next edition of the orange book

  • "Red Book" reminds me of the "Dragon Book". Anyone know what I'm talking about? :)
    • Aho, Sethi, Ullman.
    • Quothe Hackers (the movie):

      PHREAK (to Cereal): D'you bring those Crayola books?
      CEREAL: Oh yeah, technicolor rainbow.

      Cereal brings a book out of his bag.

      CEREAL: Green one.
      JOEY: What is that, what is that? Lemmie see. What are these?
      DADE: International Unix Environments.

      Cereal pulls out another book.

      CEREAL: Luscious orange?

      Cereal hands the orange book to Phreak.

      DADE: Computer security criteria, DOD standards.

      Another book comes out.

      DADE: The Pink Shirt Book, Guide to IBM PCs. So called due to the nasty pink
  • ...was the manual that came with the Apple II.
  • I bought the previous edition of the red book because it was written in the summary that it was talking about the vertex and fragment shaders which they didn't.

    As you may guess, I was (and still am) quite pissed off by this false advertising, in the newsgroup an author said it was a mistake, a pretty big mistake if you ask me! Have they fixed this "mistake"?

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