I have had my OpenGL Redbook on the shelf for months. I am wondering if I should finally get around to reading it and learning OpenGL.
Is it worth it for me to spend the time to learn OpenGL?
+1
A:
It depends on if the low-level stuff is of interest to you. If so, I highly recommend reading that book. It's the canonical book on OpenGL. I refer to it myself from time to time as I use OpenGL on my own projects.
Jim Buck
2009-07-15 19:17:10
A:
It really depends on what you want to do. Certainly, there are plenty of higher level libraries that can make things easier, but they also add bloat and dependencies that you might not want in your project. I say learn the basics - it will only take you a couple weeks and it will help you understand any wrapper libraries you use better anyway.
Donnie DeBoer
2009-07-15 19:22:27
A:
I've done a lot of vector drawing using GDI+ and have been annoyed at how slow it is. By learning a bit of OpenGL, I'm now able to draw much of what I need about 25 times faster than with GDI+.
So for me, it's worthwhile; use the tool that gives the best results for the task at hand!
Charlie Salts
2009-07-15 19:34:37
+1
A:
If you have any interest in doing complex graphics of any kind, OpenGL is well worth the effort. Even if you don't end up using OpenGL alot by itself, I find that having a base understanding of OGL helps with understanding a lot of other stuff.
Electrons_Ahoy
2009-07-15 19:36:49
such as blind bug fixing! i've been learning opengl myself and i hate it when i can't get something to render on the screen, because not only is something wrong, but i can't get any sort of view of what's wrong, and sometimes the geometry just isn't facing the right way or whatever... it can be hard sometimes.one of the first good things to establish is a fly-around camera so that in those instances you can try to move around and see if anything shows up that can hint at what's wrong.
Ricket
2009-07-17 13:09:03