[elteto]

What is the best way to attack this book as a graphics programming beginner (but with plenty of C++ experience)? I saw several people praise it a while back in HN and took a cursory look. It seemed complete and thoroughly explained but missing examples or "checkpoints" along the way where I could turn around and test what I had been building.

[mattnewport]

One option is to dive in with Peter Shirley's ray tracing intros linked at the top of http://www.realtimerendering.com/raytracing.html

These will get you a quick overview and get something rendering. PBRT is a great follow up to really understand the physical underpinnings and get more into the theory of how to do things correctly and efficiently.

[elteto]

Fantastic! Thanks for the suggestion.

[corysama]

The new Real Time Rendering book is good. Also, the sidebar of https://www.reddit.com/r/opengl/ has good tutorials