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OpenGL SuperBible (3rd Edition) Review by sd
Quite a good book but many things to be improved
To me, this book is at average rating. The explanation of the book is quite confusing in some sense. First of all, if you follow the book sample coding by including "OpenGL.h" header file, you may find that it does not work. In fact, the header file name is "OpenGLSB.h". For this small thing which the author is failed to correct it before the publication of the book, it is a failure. For beginner like me, it is really a bad experience to have first sample coding does not run as expected.
Second, this book shares common mistake as done by other books. The author assume that you already know how to setup the OpenGL enviroment before you proceed with your programming. In fact, before you can program using OpenGL API, you need to setup the environment first. For this, you have to browse to OpenGL official site http://www.opengl.org for the OpenGL environment-setup details. For most beginner may think that the OpenGL API is to be used as common C/C++ program, which leading them to bulk of errors. To me, the author must tell the users what to do before program in OpenGL, but he didn't. It is another failure of the book.
The other reviewer has claimed that 12 chapters of the book can be finished in 12 hours. This claim is very subjective. For a beginner who know nothing about computer graphics, it is very impossible to finish that many chapters in that specified time as claimed by the reviewer.
At overall, this book is still the best OpenGL book in the market. This book does not use many of the mathematic jargons but still can make you a successful OpenGL programmer. This is the really great part of the book! However, for those who want to learn advance graphics programming, I don't think this is the book for you. It can serve only as reference where you want to refresh your OpenGL knowledge.