Customer Reviews

Cutting-Edge Direct3D Programming: Everything You Need to Create Stunning 3D Applications with Direct3D

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

It's okay if you want to make a one object 3D scene with very little interaction with the user but if you want to be able to control virtual cameras, move lights or create real world scenes with more than one object then look somewhere else. If anyone considers buying this book I strongly urge them to track down Stan's web site and look at the demos, is that what you want to program?

This is good book, well written and with good examples. If you want to learn about Direct 3D Retained Mode, this is the best book. The poor side is the book doesn't recover Direct 3D Immediate Mode. Only few people are using D3D RM to create professional applications, all are using D3D Immediate Mode. If only i could find book that recover D3D IM like this book.. I would give 5 stars !!

I'm a final year student of Software Engineering at the University of Westminster, London , England. I have been using this book for my final project, and I can say that is is the best practical introduction to D3D ever! The examples are really good and even work fine in NT4. If you want to get into DirectX or D3D get this book. Honestly.

I have been tackling with Direct3D through a couple of books now, first being Awsome Power of DirectX/3D and it was this book (Cutting Edge 3d) that finally made sense of it. The book is well written and pulls the reader through the LOGICAL and COMPLETE steps to creating D3D Retained Mode apps. The previous book mentioned (Awsome Power.. )is terribly written with gaps left in the reader's mind as to the structure of the code. I Finally got it~!! This may or may not be a full 5 star book, but it is definately the best book I've seen on this specific subject, so I gave it the best rating.

This is an introductory text on D3D and only covers parts of Retained Mode. For a computer book it is EXTREMELY well written. MFC is used for all the programs. This allows the author and reader to concentrate, after the obligatory MFC chapter, on the D3D issues. The 3D app-wizard, which is included on CD, is a great tool for allowing a person to create a quick program to test out different features of Retained Mode. The format of each chapter is repetitive, which is kind of annoying yet it does allow you to concentrate on what is different and new from the previous chapter. I found it very useful as an introduction and will be purchasing other titles by the author.

I was dumb enough to not look at the date published before I bought this book. It was published in *1996*. It is way out of date. Do yourself a favor and find a book that is more current. 4 years old is very old for this topic (true for most computer topics).

At first, when I got this book, I was a little worried, because all of the chapters start with, "Create a new project with the d3d app-wizard included with the book," and it didn't work with VC++ 6. I was about to write saying how annoyed I was that it doesn't tell you how to do it without the wizard(which is still kind of bothersome, but you can read through the code). But then I went to the webpage, and they had a newer version for VC++ 4, 5, and 6! That is awesome! Not many companies do that. That is the whole reason I am writing a good review right now. The only bad thing really is that it's not very current, but it's ok since most of the DirectX functions haven't changed names or parameters or anything.

This is good book for the right person. I don't like the fact that the book uses MFC for everything. The author however does explain things well, but there is too much overhead within Direct3d to make it simple, then MFC kicks in and makes it worse. The examples are all done in a window, and the author doesn't put much information about fullscreen modes, until the end.

This is for the Claremont, California , March 1, 1999 writer. The author gave you the source code for the wizard and instructions on how to compile it. It was a piece of cake. Look beyond your nose before writing comments about peoples hard work.

One negative is that it did not dover Intermediate Mode.

Either publish this or remove his stupid comments.

Although I like the style of this book, I cannot compile any codes with Visual C++ version 6.

The author provides custom AppWizard, based on which the codes are simplified and supposed to work. The AppWizard is, however, too old, and incompatible with Visual C++ version 6. This implies that none of the codes in the book work with Visual C++ 6.

Unless the author provides a fix, this is a book to avoid for users of a new version of Visual C++.