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Rating: 
Summary: excellent starting point
Review: I am a programmer who needs to implement some graphics in an application. Nothing really serious, but beyond the functions of Win32 API. So naturally I turned to OpenGL, but at first a was little turned off by its complexity (well, so I thought).
I ended up buying this book, and also the "red book" (OpenGL Programming Guide). OpenGL Primer is a great book to get a general overview and fast hands on experience. I was amazed how easy it actually is to get a basic OpenGL program up and running. When I am interested in more in depth knowledge on a subject, I turn to the red book.
Again I can recommend this to every beginner on this subject. Although on the cover it states "for programmers with background in computer graphics", I can say its easy to understand even if you have next to no prior knowledge, like me.
enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Perfect for a beginner with basic programming skills.
Review: I bought this book recently as a supplement to a computer graphics class that I am currently taking at Ohio State University. While this book is not an in-depth coverage of OpenGL or computer graphics, it does provide clear and concise explanations of OpenGL and GLUT functions necessary for the novice. I found it to be well organized and full of useful examples of code. The author states that it is meant as a companion book to his textbook on OpenGL. It is easy to see that this is the case, in that certain expectations exist in order to fully appreciate the book. For example, the book does not cover the transformation matrices which form the bases for the transformation functions. It glosses over the coordinate transformations as well. In order to focus on how to achieve a desired effect the Primer concerns itself more with demonstating different functions and their effects rather than explaining how the functions achieve the things they do. Still, I bought the book knowing this was the case. It is an excellent companion to a more thorough text. I am using Hill's Computer Graphics Using OpenGL, Second Edition. Naturally, for a complete guide to OpenGL, I recommend the Red Book, OpenGL Programming Guide currently in it's Third Edition.
Rating: 
Summary: Bring out the GLUT. The GLUT's sleepin.....
Review: Then I guess you better wake him up! That's right, I hope you like using the GLUT (Graphics Library Utility Toolkit) because that's all Angel uses here. Sure, the GLUT is great if you just want to display a spinning triangle or create the most basic program, but if you want to create an OpenGL project with some bite then you should pick up another book which will teach you Qt or Windows programming. If you're a n00b, opengl will render all of your shapes and colors, but it can't create its own window to run in. The GLUT is one way to create an "opengl window," but the GLUT is by all means the most basic and useless of the possible methods. Yes, I realize this is a "primer," but for 30+ dollars, you can do better. Much, much better. Besides nothing in this book isn't something you couldn't find in a pdf file on opengl.org.
Rating:
Summary: Bring out the GLUT. The GLUT's sleepin.....
Review: Then I guess you better wake him up! That's right, I hope you like using the GLUT (Graphics Library Utility Toolkit) because that's all Angel uses here. Sure, the GLUT is great if you just want to display a spinning triangle or create the most basic program, but if you want to create an OpenGL project with some bite then you should pick up another book which will teach you Qt or Windows programming. If you're a n00b, opengl will render all of your shapes and colors, but it can't create its own window to run in. The GLUT is one way to create an "opengl window," but the GLUT is by all means the most basic and useless of the possible methods. Yes, I realize this is a "primer," but for 30+ dollars, you can do better. Much, much better. Besides nothing in this book isn't something you couldn't find in a pdf file on opengl.org.
Rating: 
Summary: Useful, albeit buggy
Review: This book doesn't intend to be a full, in-depth OpenGL manual. It gears itself toward providing a dense, mid-level overview of a complex graphics API. The problem with this book is that it is filled with buggy example code. Considering the fact that the reader of this book will not be an experienced OpenGL developer, it's difficult to go through code line-by-line and find the careless type-o or other error. For some reason, this is a fairly common problem in many programming books (O'Reilly books being an exception). Why the publishers don't make sure the sample code compiles before they print a book, is beyond me.
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