The OpenGL Extensions Guide

OpenGL is the premier environment for developing 2D and 3D graphics and game applications. The interface has been the choice of game programmers, mainly because of its cross-platform operability, but also because it is constantly evolving to keep pace with hardware advances in the form of extensions. Until now, the game industry was lacking one single, concise reference to help make sense of the dozens of extensions available. The OpenGL Extensions Guide provides this much needed resource and concentrates specifically on the extensions most important to developing modern 3D games. The book is laid out in an intuitive fashion, discussing groups of extensions that modify or augment similar components of the base OpenGL architecture. In addition, the text focuses mainly on operational and implementation issues, discussing the underlying mathematics of an extension only when it is critical to understanding that extension's functionality.

Eric Lengyel is a veteran of the computer games industry with over 16 years of experience writing game engines. He has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California at Davis and an MS in Mathematics from Virginia Tech. Eric is the founder of Terathon Software, where he currently leads ongoing development of the C4 Engine.