OpenGL Superbible: Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference
£40.80£42.30 (-4%)
OpenGL® SuperBible, Seventh Edition, is the definitive programmer’s guide, tutorial, and reference for OpenGL 4.5, the world’s leading 3D API for real-time computer graphics. The best introduction for any developer, it clearly explains OpenGL’s newest APIs; key extensions; shaders; and essential, related concepts. You’ll find up-to-date, hands-on guidance for all facets of modern OpenGL development―both desktop and mobile.
The authors explain what OpenGL does, how it connects to the graphics pipeline, and how it manages huge datasets to deliver compelling experiences. Step by step, they present increasingly sophisticated techniques, illuminating key concepts with worked examples. They introduce OpenGL on several popular platforms, and offer up-to-date best practices and performance advice.
This revised and updated edition introduces many new OpenGL 4.5 features, including important ARB and KHR extensions that are now part of the standard. It thoroughly covers the latest Approaching Zero Driver Overhead (AZDO) performance features, and demonstrates key enhancements with new example applications.
Coverage includes
- A practical introduction to real-time 3D graphics, including foundational math
- Core techniques for rendering, transformations, and texturing
- Shaders and the OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) in depth
- Vertex processing, drawing commands, primitives, fragments, and framebuffers
- Compute shaders: harnessing graphics cards for more than graphics
- Pipeline monitoring and control
- Managing, loading, and arbitrating access to data
- Building larger applications and deploying them across platforms
- Advanced rendering: light simulation, artistic and non-photorealistic effects, and more
- Reducing CPU overhead and analyzing GPU behavior
- Supercharging performance with persistent maps, bindless textures, and fine-grained synchronization
- Preventing and debugging errors
- New applications: texture compression, text drawing, font rendering with distance fields, high-quality texture filtering, and OpenMP
Bonus material and sample code are available at openglsuperbible.com.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Addison-Wesley Professional, 7th edition (13 Aug. 2015) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 880 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 9780672337475 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0672337475 |
| Dimensions | 17.91 x 5.46 x 23.24 cm |
by T. Kane
I’m pleased to say that I am learning a lot from it.
I’ve been using OpenGL for a few years now, but wanted to get a better grounding – particularly around more modern features. There are a few areas that I was interested in, that this book solved for me almost immediately, including discussions around framebuffers, and multi-texture rendering approaches.
Sadly though, I am encountering numerous errors. Some are simply grammatical, while others are simply incorrect statements that could probably have been caught with a closer proofread. I almost feel glad that I am able to recognise some of these errors, but it makes me wonder which ones I am being misled by.
Some shader listings are missing key elements that are described in the text in passing. A quick look at the sample code reveals the missing piece of the puzzle, but even that is occasionally difficult to locate (the sample library is not organised by figure #’s).
The website has not been updated since prior to publishing. I was hoping to find an errata section so that I could annotate my physical copy.. but no deal.
All in all, I’m very much enjoying this book. The order in which certain topics are introduced seems a little jumbled, those with little prior experience may find themselves having to jump back and forth in order to make sense of things.. but I am learning many subtleties about OpenGL that I definitely was not aware of previously.
The book is solid, and by that I mean – it’ll definitely hurt if you drop it.
It’s a shame it was printed in black and white, that’s a bit of a crime for a book based on a Graphics Library (GL).
A little extra reading on the side will be necessary – certain areas of OpenGL features are described, but their utility or practicality is not always explained.. eg: shader storage blocks.. they seem flexible, potentially slower than uniform blocks (maybe) – but when would I want to use one? What does it give me? Perhaps that’s answered later in the book.
All in all, it’s a great reference. The index is particularly handy. I expect I will be reaching for this book a lot in the coming months.
by DP
Whilst the information within the book is generally correct, few of the details are! In a technical manual “comprehensive tutorial and reference” this is a big oversight. Many of the functions have incorrect names or too few arguments which leads to confusion about what is possible and causes many headaches when each function has to be looked up on docs.gl (much better free reference) before you can actually use any of the code. It’s quite shocking that many of the errors slipped through as they clearly haven’t attempted to even compile the code that they’ve committed to printing and selling. Sad I wasted my money on this and I’d advise everyone to forget about buying it and just use the online resources which are generally accurate. Really disappointing book!
by snake de plume
Clear and helpful and only uses the latest OpenGL.
by Mr. Francis A. King
This book aims to be a tutorial and a reference. It may be a reference, but it is not a tutorial.
A tutorial would start by getting everyone onto the same page. This book does not do this. Written by experts, it assumes that you already have a working system for compiling and linking the code. It requires at least one chapter on how to get a working system going. It actually has a recommendation to get GLFW – and that’s it, one line of text.
Also, other people trying to write a tutorial would try to be inclusive. This book assumes that you have OpenGL 4.5. My laptop has OpenGL 4.0.
The book comes with software (sb7) written by the author. It doesn’t come compiled for Windows – you have to compile it yourself. It doesn’t compile.
I am underwhelmed by the quality of the ‘tutorial’.
by Mr. B. Crawford
This book claims to give a “Comprehensive Tutorial” but it is written in one of the most backwards and laboured writing styles that I have come across in such a CS textbook.
This book should NOT use the sb7 namespace and support scripts as it increases the barrier to entry tenfold. For one, you need to compile it yourself and this is not documented very well for various platforms, and furthermore introducing a layer of abstraction like this for a dedicated OpenGL tutorial/reference only complicates matters more. The tutorial should be from the ground up! I am surprised to see a 880 page book fail to do this. I mean why show such complicated formulae targeted solely at mathematicians and experts near the beginning of the tutorial.
Honestly, very underwhelmed by this “super”bible.
by sparky 1961
brilliant book just what i needed
by naif Alharbi
Really comprehensive reference!
If you are an OpenGL developer I highly recommend you to have it.