OpenGl 3 vs GL11

[bloodsquirrel]

So, I've spent the last two days getting my first taste of the LWJGL and openGL, and I've come to a point where I'm wondering if it's worth it to bother with trying to do things the OpenGL 3+ way.

First off, OpenGL 3+ seems to be more complicated to use (Apparently, there's no way to color and object without going full-steam into shaders). Complicating matters is how most of the literature available is older, making most of it flat-out non compatible with OpenGL 3, especially LWJGL-specific literature. I'm just trying to do 2D graphics right now, and most of what I see is using function that OpenGL 3+ doesn't work with.

On the other hand, a lot of GL11 is supposedly heading toward being removed from OpenGL.

So, are people in general moving to OpenGL 3+, or are they sticking with the older versions?

[delt0r]

Both. People are using both. The old GL11 won't go anywhere for a while, there is too much that uses it. But it won't be "accelerated" like using the newer pipeline. Note that is not the same as saying its not accelerated.

GL3+ is the way things are going by getting rid of things which just are not used, or should not be used (more or less). Its not all bad since in many ways its simpler. Basically use VBO with indexed triangles + shaders and you have more or less all the raw performance you can get out of modern cards.

However if you are learning opengl or 3d graphics in general, then learning the basics with immediate mode and GL11 is what i would recommend.  Just expect to replace it later if you need raw performance. Point in fact using index vertex arrays is not hard even right off the bat IMO.  Doing this means you only need to learn a few concepts at a time.

[Rednax]

OpenGL 3+ is indeed harded to learn, but I do not find it harder to use. I have never used a lot of openGL 1.1 myself, but have seen other student at my university using openGL 1.1 in the same projects.
Fact is that I am re-using the same code for every project, hence it saves a lot of code writing and I do not need to remember all the details every time.
This means it is not harder for me to draw some simple things in openGL 3+ than it would be in openGL 1.1

If you want to learn. Go for openGL 3+ and buy a good book on it. The openGL superbible is the book I used myself, but there are other good books.

If you just want some simple graphics, openGL 1.1 is fast enough and easier to learn.
Remember that it is still much faster than stuf like flash, so dont worry about performance.

There is one other huge advantage of openGL 1.1: text.
There are decent text libraries that can draw text for you in openGL 1.1
Not sure if they exist for lwjgl, but they do exist for c/c++.
openGL 3+ has no such libraries.
For text I had to use a bitmap font generator and create my own classes to manage the images and font info.

[Cubic]

In 3.3 it's harder to get a single coloured triangle on the screen. Everything else is easier.