Customer Reviews

Real-Time 3D Terrain Engines Using C++ and DirectX

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

this book doesn't give you any background or theory on how to create a terrain engine. insted it only shows you code, code and more code!
The little theory presented here seems to be the one in DirectX SDK documentation and it only uses of D3DX functions...

Well... don't buy it!

The book is exactly how the title describes it. It is developing a 3d terrain engine and if that is what you are looking to do then this is well worth the 30 bucks, in my opinion. The author is an experienced programmer and it shows through the code. The design of the engine is elegant and if you learn nothing else from the book you will at least walk away with a better understanding of engine design.

The book not only shows you the theory behind terrain programming but also resource management, scene management and integrating pixel and vertex shaders. This book seems to always be laying around open on my desk.

Basically, I'm a professional OGL/D3D programmer and rather because I don't have days to devote to discerning the differences between DX8.x's PS/VS pipeline and the DX9 pipeline, I have found this book to be a great segway into porting to DX9. You don't need any previous DX experience to get a ton out of this book; however, I would recommend some 3D experience prior to indulging in its mysteries. The author writes very practically and well, and explains the problems and solutions to large scale terrain rendering clearly and informatively.

I can't recommend this book enough.

The author did a good job of explaining the algorithms. Publisher should've paid for someone to read the book once before printing it. There were tons of spelling errors. This book isn't for people new to DirectX. It was worth $30.

I've been working on my first game engine for a long time. This book was a big help in teaching all the missing pieces. For new game programmers, this book is really good. You need to know some C++ and Direct X, but the book is still helpful if you don't.

I picked up this book along with Trent Pollack's 'focus on 3D terrain programming'. Side-by-side, I'd advise anyone to pick up Snook's book. It has more information on terrain rendering and is well written. I'm still finding useful ideas in the sample code to use in my own shareware game. Of all the terrain books I've seen, this one is the best.

At first I was put off by the amount of code included with this book. But the more I look through it, the happier I am to have it. The book itself is a great introduction to terrain rendering and game engine construction. The code has a wealth of additional info on things like memory and resource management, random number generation, etc. You do have to enjoy reading code, but the rewards are worth it. Highly recommended.

This is a tough book to recommend. If you need your hand held through detailed examples, this is not a good source at all, especially since the sample programs are (1) overly complex and platform-dependent and (2) slow and ugly. On the other hand, this DOES discuss texturing, quadtrees, a few CLOD algorithms, sky and water rendering, Perlin noise, and a few other things as they relate to terrain, and can be a useful source of ideas for the not-quite-novice. Yes, most of the information here can be found on the web, but that's true of practically any programming book.

By the way, a MAJOR annoyance here is the really rather astounding number of typos and basic usage errors ("discreet" vs. "discrete," etc) that somehow were not caught in editing. There seems be a trend to this effect in game programming books lately, but this one is really exceptionally error-ridden.

This book has a lot of great info in it which is really helping me to get a good grasp of terrain ideas for one of my projects. The only downside is that you need a pretty high end graphics card to run any of the demo code. Once I updated my video card things worked fine, so be warned. Other than that this is right on the money...

This is a really good book, one of the best i have ever get, a really nice and easy engine with a great and encapsulated code.

A neat use of pixel and vertex shaders wich is one of the evaded threads in another books, besides, this book is for DirectX (thank God)