Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL • Hacker News Board

Re: Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL

#41

Post by cyber_kinetist » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 5:39 PM UTC

fp64 wrote: post #38

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you're trapped in the Apple ecosystem then Metal is your only production-quality option. But beginner-level learning material for it is quite sparse, so it's better to transition from OpenGL to Metal rather than learning Metal from scratch. (If you're an experienced graphics dev, you should be able to follow up on Metal by just reading their example source code)

MoltenVK is pretty good I've been told

Nope, the limitations are just too huge for actual usage. Heard Godot Engine tried to use MoltenVK for macOS but experienced too many issues so they just developed a Metal backend.

The fundamental problem is Metal 3 is just too high-level to be able to emulate all of Vulkan's behavior. The new Metal 4 API (which is more low level and similar to Vulkan in many ways) might have improved things recently, but sadly MoltenVK hasn't been rewritten to this new API yet.

Re: Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL

#42

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

grishka wrote: post #22

the__alchemist wrote: post #7

In 2026: Please don't learn this; it's obsolete. Learn Vulkan (Or another modern API; or how to build engines on top of them; or how to write shaders; or how to do GPU compute using CUDA etc)

OpenGL is the only truly cross-platform graphics API out there. Vulkan isn't on Apple platforms, unless you use MoltenVK which implements it on top of Metal. Also I don't know why, but Windows games tend to use Direct3D even though afaik GPU drivers do implement Vulkan on Windows, so there must be a good reason for that. It's also much easier to grasp than Vulkan, Metal, or Direct3D.

[deleted]

Re: Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL

#43

Post by coffeeaddict1 » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

Honestly, in 2026 I would not really bother with OpenGL. Just start with WebGPU, it's much nicer. You can use it easily on most modern browsers or better can even use native libraries like Dawn or WGPU.

Re: Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL

#44

Post by coffeeaddict1 » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

vblanco wrote: post #32

the__alchemist wrote: post #7

In 2026: Please don't learn this; it's obsolete. Learn Vulkan (Or another modern API; or how to build engines on top of them; or how to write shaders; or how to do GPU compute using CUDA etc)

Im the author of vkguide.dev and i disagree. I wrote that tutorial specifically for people that have already gone through learnopengl and want to learn vulkan. The core problem with the modern apis is that they are so incredibly complicated that they will kill any newbie on the spot. When the student still doesnt really know what a mesh is, having them setup GPU side memory allocators and graphics compute pipelines i…

> The core problem with the modern apis is that they are so incredibly complicated that they will kill any newbie on the spot.

I would agree if by modern you mean DX12 or Vulkan, but WebGPU (and maybe even Metal) are quite decent.

Re: Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL

#45

Post by fp64 » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #41

fp64 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MoltenVK is pretty good I've been told

Nope, the limitations are just too huge for actual usage. Heard Godot Engine tried to use MoltenVK for macOS but experienced too many issues so they just developed a Metal backend. The fundamental problem is Metal 3 is just too high-level to be able to emulate all of Vulkan's behavior. The new Metal 4 API (which is more low level and similar to Vulkan in many ways) might have improved things recently, but sadly Molte…

Worse than OpenGL though? Haven't had the time to really look into it, probably native Metal is better, yes, but either way it might be easier to port/adapt from Vulkan than from OpenGL (due to similar concepts, no global state, etc)

Re: Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL

#46

Post by gspr » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

the__alchemist wrote: post #7

In 2026: Please don't learn this; it's obsolete. Learn Vulkan (Or another modern API; or how to build engines on top of them; or how to write shaders; or how to do GPU compute using CUDA etc)

Relatedly: could someone recommend a Vulkan introduction for people who don't "just want to make it work"? I understand the fact that Vulkan abstracts away a lot less of the rendering device than OpenGL does – that may be a strength or a weakness, but either way I'd like to understand. It seems a lot of introductions just skip over it all while apologizing for the boilerplate.

I think I once bookmarked an article which takes an interesting approach, namely doing all rendering with Vulkan compute! Does that ring a bell to anyone? I can't find it again. It seems very appealing to me. It may not be the best way to approach graphics, but I know a lot more about computations in general than I do graphics in particular. And knowing Vulkan Compute would help me in lots of ways, so it I can also use it for graphics that's a nice bonus.

Re: Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL

#47

Post by leecommamichael » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

At this point GL is an interface, implementations will come and go, but the interface refuses to die. It's still the simplest way to get started, and the browser (WebGL) demands portability for code written against the API.

Re: Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL

#48

Post by throwaway2046 » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 5:54 PM UTC

raincole wrote: post #20

criddell wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so much easier than Vulkan or writing shaders and the performance is more than good enough for a lot of applications. I wonder if somebody has written a adapter layer to write old OpenGL and translate it on the fly to Vulkan?

> It's so much easier than Vulkan or writing shaders Even if you use OpenGL you still need to write shaders.

    > Even if you use OpenGL you still need to write shaders.

Not in OpenGL 1.x

Re: Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL

#49

Post by raincole » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 5:55 PM UTC

troupo wrote: post #24

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2026: Yes yes, please please learn this if you're beginning computer graphics. This is basically the One and Only Holy Bible of graphics programming, and dealing with a slightly outdated and weird API doesn't make it worse even a teeny bit. You will never get the same quality of fundamental education material from any of the other tutorials ( especially Vulkan ones, since most of them assume you already know the b…

> You will never get the same quality of fundamental material If you're looking for fundamental material, the last thing you want is learning a very (not slightly) outdated and weird API. > Vulkan and DX12 are currently flawed APIs that are unnecessarily complex and doesn't even match the performance characteristics of current-gen hardware And OpneGL is worse

Have you actually read the linked site beyond its name? The site is about fundamentals. Yes, it contains OpenGL code, but what it covers is the fundamentals of real time graphics, not just OpenGL API.

Re: Learn OpenGL, extensive tutorial resource for learning Modern OpenGL

#50

Post by BraveOPotato » Thu, Jul 23, 2026, 5:58 PM UTC

Shaders used to not make any sense to me. The tutorial writes a simple expression and boom the screen is displaying all kinds of funky things.

Then I realized you're just writing code that executes on all pixels sequentially. That made it easier to understand