Should I go out and by a book and if so any recomendations? I wish to do 2d openGL stuff for now. I have searched the net for some 2d tutorials but came up with next to nothing. All the tutorials are about 3d. It makes me think that no one uses openGL for 2d at all. Is there any truth to this?
Well 2d opengl is somewhat of a silly term anyways since no matter what your basically always doing 3d graphics. It’s just… flat. 
So instead of drawing an image you have to make 4 vertices into a square and texture it. The thing I had the hardest time with after doing java2d stuff for a long time was just adjusting to how opengl does business. i.e. you setup a state and render something, and generally trying to figure out what the hell was really going on.
Though I think without Cas’s SPGL to look at/use I think I would still be doing java2d and just using openal for sound.
http://chman-area.tuxfamily.org/
I also have a ton of “omfg this isnt working” newbie questions on here you might find useful is you decide to try and do this.
Thanx I have already started learning the tutorials frm both your site and Nehe. You cleared up my confusion. I had the suspision that all openGL is 3d and the 2d stuff is just flat with only x,y translations. I was wondering if there are any openGL newbie books worth buying? As far as Java2D was is concerned I learned everything through tutorials and forum posts, but since the openGL API is so widely published maybe a book is a better way to go?
While I don’t know of any OpenGL 2D books the only books I would recommend for OpenGL are the Red Book and the Blue Book. I do own a copy of the OpenGL Super Bible that doesn’t suck. Most of the others are pretty poor that I have seen.
Everyone should own a copy of the red and blue books though.
What are the red and blue books?
The red book is the official book for learning OpenGL, and starts from the basics and covers all the major features. You can get a copy here: http://www.gamedev.net/download/redbook.pdf
The blue book is a description of all the functions and their parameters and use, basically all the documentation. Its also avalible online i think, dunno where. As a fallback you can find all the core functions (up to v1.1) described in the MSDN docs.
Here:
http://www.opengl.org/developers/documentation/books.html
“The OpenGL Programming Guide 3rd Edition The Official Guide to Learning” is the red book and “OpenGL Reference Manual 3rd edition” is the blue book.
Thanx for the replies. Last question going back to the topic of 2d openGL. So even if everything is essentially 3d I can still have a completely 2d game with openGL by having flat images and movement only along the x and y axis, correct?
Here’s a small tutorial on ignoring the Z coord: