OpenGL Programming for the X Window System

by Mark J. Kilgard

Book Overview

OpenGL is the fastest and most widely available software standard for producing high-quality color images of 3D scenes. This practical guide shows X programmers how to construct working 3D... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201483599
• ISBN13: 9780201483598
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 576 Pages
• Weight: 1.87 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 7.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

My first openGL book

This was the first book I purchased on openGL. This book is a very good introduction to openGL. If I might add one peice of advice to the up and coming linux Graphics programmers. DO NOT shy away from windows openGL programming books. Once you understand the concepts you will easily apply them to your linux or unix work. I think that every unix/linux openGL programmer should have this book, as well as the RED and BLUE openGL programming guide books on their book shelf. One last word. All of these books will primarily focus on understanding the concepts and to do this they spend alot of time working with the GLUT libraries. It will be up to you to figure out how to integrate this with QT or Motif. However....this book does have a section on openGL programming with Motif....if you use QT however you will be learning on your own. It isn't impossible or even that hard. It does however require a good hacker like approach. One last word while on the subject. You might also want to purchase a good book on linear algebra or mathematics for computer graphics if you plan on rendering more than a few simple programs.Good luck to you.

Definitive for 1996

Back when I was learning GL, this book was the best. It covered the basics at a good level of detail. Almost as if Mark could read our product requirements, it also has appendecies on off-topic-to-GL-but-not-to-us topics, such as the X input extension and graphics overlays. I believe GLX has gone through a few revisions since this book last had a new edition. Therefore some of its data may end up referencing deprecated old glx functions instead of the slick new method. In particular I'm thinking I saw something about visual selection changing. That's the only reason I'm holding back on star number 5.

Overall a very good supplement to the Red Book

Mark has a very good way of describing how things work. I have been using OpenGL for while but not using XWindows extensions that much. This book helped a lot and I used it to make sense of some the convoluted text in other books for the wgl functions.

I enjoyed the book.

I think that it was a good book. This was my first OpenGL book, and I'm now purchasing more. It's good to see that there are some X Window System specific books out there. The book explains in detail GLUT, but not some other complex areas of OpenGL (Why I'm buying more OpenGL books...). I'd recommend the book for beginners of OpenGL that are frusterated with Windows-specific texts.