Book review: OpenGL Development Cookbook

I was proposed to review the latest book from Packet Publishing: OpenGL Development Cookbook.  This post is a slightly expanded version of the review I've already published on two major book review websites.

I had great expectations when I first opened this book.  In fact, I feel there is a big void right in the middle of published books about OpenGL.

At one side of the void there are either technical references or introductory texts, which explain the reader how to properly use the library but don't show practical applications: at the end of those books people know how to texture lookup from a vertex shader, not how to render realistic terrain from a height map.

At the other side there are collections of articles about very advanced rendering techniques, intended for people already well versed in graphics programming and hardly of any use for the everyday developer (think about the ShaderX or the GPU Pro series).

The premise of this book is to be the gap filler, which tells you about all the cool things you can do with OpenGL (in addition to rendering teapots) in a wide range of topics, while remaining practical enough for the average OpenGL developer.


While it's a good shot in that direction, it doesn't live up to this ambitious premise.


Let's start with what's good: recipes cover a vast range of applications, including mirrors, object picking, particle systems, GPU physics simulations, ray tracing, volume rendering and more.

OpenGL version of choice is 3.3 core profile, so all the recipes are implemented using modern OpenGL while still being compatible with most GPU hardware out there.  Every recipe comes with a self-contained and working code example that you can run and tweak. All examples share coding style and conventions, which is great added value.

The toolchain of choice is Visual Studio for Windows, but the examples also build unmodified on Linux installations.  Despite Mac OS X only supporting up to OpenGL 3.2, examples not requiring 3.3 features will build there as well with minor modifications (just be sure to use included GLUT.framework rather than freeglut, as the latter relies on XQuartz which isn't able to request an OpenGL 3 context).


Then, there's something that just doesn't work well.  First, the formatting of code excerpts is terrible: long lines wrap twice or thrice with no leading spaces, so without highlighting it's nigh impossible to read the code right at first glance:

glm::mat4 T = glm::translate( glm::mat4(1.0f),
glm::vec3(0.0f,0.0f, dist));
glm::mat4 Rx=glm::rotate(T,rX,glm::vec3(1.0f, 0.0f,
0.0f));
glm::mat4 MV=glm::rotate(Rx,rY,
glm::vec3(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f));

Given that a good 30% of this book is code, this is really something that should be addressed in a second edition.

A somewhat deeper problem is about how recipes are presented.  Most of them dive directly in a step-by-step sequence of code snippets, taking little time to explain the required background and the overall idea behind the implementation.  On a related note, the book states that knowledge of OpenGL is just a "definite plus" to get through it, but after the very first recipe spends a total of three lines explaining what Vertex Array Objects are, before jumping into code that uses them, it becomes clear that being proficient with OpenGL is a requirement to appreciate the book.

The quality of the recipes varies a lot through the book: the best written and most interesting ones are from chapters 6, 7 and 8, which comes as no surprise as the author's research interests include the topics they cover.  I would have exchanged many of the previous recipes, some of which are variations on the same theme, to be about techniques that both fit the recipe format and are relevant for any up-to-date rendering engine (depth of field, fur, caustics, etc...).  On a related note, I think that perhaps the single biggest flaw of the book is that it's written by a single author, but to offer 50 great recipes a cookbook needs several ones, each master in her own trade and each offering the best of her knowledge.


In the end: if you're already well versed in OpenGL, have interest in the specific topics best covered by the author, and you're going to read each recipe at the computer to comfortably read code, OpenGL Development Cookbook has something to offer.  While not the gapfiller I was initially looking for, the learning opportunity from having a code example for each recipe is remarkable.