Customer Reviews

Game Graphics Programming

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3 star:		(1)
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The contents of the book are relatively decent. But he never goes too in depth. It reminds me of a larger "Real-time Rendering" book. The book is easy to read, but I haven't read the whole thing.

Also, there is a lot of missing / not working code on the CD. The examples related to SH and ambient occlusion are MIA in particular. There are empty folders with respect to the HDR stuff. But I'm guessing he wanted you to view the stuff in the DX SDK.

While there are not many books in the subject of real time rendering which cover advanced shading techniques, this book might look very attractive at first. When I wanted to buy the book I looked at the topics but didn't have the chance to look inside much, and it was unfortunate because you don't find what you expect in the text! The quality of this book is really low, there's a lot of source code printed in the book without any need which has filled most of the space, and you don't find anything more than basic level graphics code in it which you probably know already.

If you want a good book on the subject checkout Real Time Rendering although it doesn't give you implementation details but gives you a good general overview of many different techniques. You probably can find the implementations somewhere online anyway so it's not bad at all.

Any college-level library strong in games or graphic programming needs as a basic, foundation reference Sherrod's GAMES GRAPHIC PROGRAMMING, a weighty, 644 page volume with accompanying cd-rom which offers techniques transferable to any programming language or operating system. From coverage of complex lighting and gaming techniques to the basics of game graphics, shading, and special effects, this comes from a university graduate in the Computer Information Systems program who has himself authored many games and graphics books.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch