General links, references, tutorials etc
Sections
Public mailing Lists, USENET groups and IRC channels
Optimised "fast paths" in current drivers
Mailing Lists (restricted membership)
Main OpenGL website, for general information
Online tutorial in basic OpenGL programming
Mark Kilgard's list of common OpenGL programming pitfalls
Ricardo Sarmiento's tutorial on OpenGL games programming using Delphi
(From Eugene Pervago's site.)
(Specifications and references online.)
(Descriptions of the main reference books available.)
The OpenGL 1.1 Red Book online
(The Red Book is the OpenGL programming guide.)
(Including interesting comments on what has proved to be a mistake as well as what has worked well.)
Public mailing lists, USENET groups and IRC channels
(Subscription information and a link to the archives for the OpenGL game development list can be found here. Note that the web archive at egroups seems to be badly out of date as of December 1999, but the list archive can be accessed via email. To get more information on this, send the HELP command to the subscription address mentioned in the link above.)
OpenGL Game Development list FAQ
(Generic questions about OpenGL can be asked in the USENET group comp.graphics.api.opengl. People without USENET access can read and post to the group from this link.)
Mailing List for OpenGL "Newbies"
An IRC channel dedicated to OpenGL is also available; see #opengl on EFnet.
Optimised "fast paths" in current drivers
John Carmack's notes on optimising OpenGL drivers for Quake3
(Given the prominence of Quake 3, the path described in this document is a reasonable guide to what you might expect to be the highly optimised "fast path" on current OpenGL drivers for games targets as of December 1999. Hardware transform and lighting - which was not really a prime concern during most of Quake 3 development - is likely to make some difference, however; for notes on that, see the the GeForce 256 FAQ below.)
Summary of Brian Hook's talk on the Quake 3 rendering pipeline at GDC 99
(The full text can be downloaded from the Game Developers Conference Library. A login is necessary, but a free one can be obtained from Gamasutra.)
FAQ on programming NVidia's GeForce 256 in OpenGL, with notes on how to achieve optimal performance from the transform and lighting hardware.
Tutorial on using OpenGL extensions
(Extensions are the main way in which the OpenGL API definition progresses. This tutorial includes information on how to use them in Windows.)
(NVidia seem to be the current leader when it comes to developing OpenGL for games. Files describing their current extensions can be downloaded from here.)
S3TC texture compression extension for OpenGL
(Note: This is actually a link to a mirror of the specification on this site, since the original document seems to have been removed from the S3 site, although the same information can be found at the bottom of this page as of February 2000.)
(FXT1 is 3dfx's "open source" texture compression specification, which will be getting an OpenGL extension of its own.)
Most recent "Advanced OpenGL Programming" SIGGRAPH course notes
(These are from SIGGRAPH 99)
(These are one way to do lighting in OpenGL without using the built in vertex lighting support, which is generally quite slow unless you have a graphics card such as the GeForce 256 which accelerates these operations in hardware. Sample code for an extended version of this technique is now available. Information on different forms of light mapping can be found in the SIGGRAPH 99 notes linked above.)
(Notes on using hardware accelerated stencil buffers, if available, for rendering shadows and reflections.)
Way Cool, Way Fast OpenGL Rendering Techniques
(Notes on various effects appropriate for games, such as volumetric shadows, projective texturing etc, and sample code showing how to do them in OpenGL. In general hardware support for any features used - e.g. stencil buffers - will be required to get acceptable performance.)
Tutorial on using OpenGL for Stereoscopic Rendering
Link to information on "Relief Texturing" using OpenGL
Mailing Lists (restricted membership)
Chris Hecker's Professional OpenGL Game Developers List
(Chris Hecker maintains a mailing list of professional game developers using or interested in using OpenGL for games development. Information on how to join can be found on this page. Note that the rest of the page is now very out of date (as of December 1999), and the status of OpenGL as a games API is now much improved. Most importantly, there is now a general driver installation program, Fahrenheit is now a Microsoft only initiative, FLL has become D3D as of DX8, and driver support on various games targets is now quite adequate. Many other aspects of this page are out of date as well, however.)
Interview with Brian Paul on Slashdot
(Brian Paul is the original author of Mesa, the open source clone of OpenGL)