I've just finished making three lessons for the new OpenGL 3.0 branch. Here are some key features of this API set - first of all, all of the APIs are oriented around a non "fixed-function" rendering pipeline. What that means is, when you run it, you have true control over all the steps the graphics card takes when you render.

Knowing how to do this when you're swamped with all the old APIs is pretty hard, so by limiting ourselves to only the non-deprecated functions, we get a leg up on others trying to learn.

As a result, the first three lessons are very basic - they deal with creating geometry, uploading it to the graphics card and then rendering it out. The second lesson adds colour and the third lesson shows how to make interleaved data structures.

We have to learn to crawl before we can walk, which is painful if you already knew how to run but someone takes your legs away. Next time I play with this stuff I'll figure out how to add a projection matrix in using a uniform shader variable - and how to do texture mapping again with a fragment shader. Baby steps.

For the lessons, I'm building them progressively - that means I'll comment the new details in each lesson, expecting that you've read the previous lesson - at least until I start changing around to completely new lesson forms.

There are two reified classes in the OpenGL package now too - Program and Buffer. The Buffer is all about buffer objects in OpenGL and the Program class wraps up all the shader and program APIs that you commonly want to use. This made the lessons much easier to write and I hope easier to follow too.