   Real-time 3D Terrain Engines Using C++ and DirectX
  What is your opinion of this book? It sounds just what I am after. My main problem though is that my hardware doesn''t really cope with vertex and pixel shaders. It''s a GeForce 2 Go card in my laptop (and so can''t really be upgraded). Is the demo application still functional in this situation? Will I still get use out of this book if I want to create an LOD terrain engine?Cheers   Raymond Wilsonhttp://www.bytefoundry.co.ukAuthor of Creating A PAK File Format
  I browsed through the book at the store, and it looked ok.  From what I saw, a lot of the pages were code listings, though, so that''s not so good.  I doubt your laptop will be able to run the demos at all. ;  I''ve got the book, and for theory is really is very good.  The author is good at explaining the concepts, and I really like his interlocking tiles approach to LOD (in the process of implementing it actually).  I''d recommend the book.I do have one gripe, but this is a personal opinion rather than a reason to not buy the book for yourself.  The author bases all of his sample code on the SDK sample framework, and I personally hate that framework, along with almost all of the sample code that MS write.  In my opinion, the use of that framework sometimes blurs the point that the author is trying to convey, but it is just my opinion. Atlay ;  Just want to point out that with a 1GHz, 512MB RAM and a GeForce2 GTS 32MB none of the demo programs run faster than 0.5 FPS (some won''t even start). That''s because the demo programs uses a lot of vertex shader stuff which on a GF2 gets emulated. I don''t know if the techniques used in the book can be implemented without shaders though. ;  Yeah as has been mentioned, the examples run pretty slowly but there are several updates to the codebase from www.mightysudios.com that supposedly increase performance. I thought however, that the final result he produces looks less inspiring than even the stuff in Focus on Terain.  ;  As Atlay pointed out, the book is a good theory book. Lots of neat tricks. However the samples doesn't look very good and they need high-end hardware. But the bad look of the demos probably has more to do with authors lack of artistic skill than the actual code used. Also this not a beginners book. But if you consider yourself a decent coder you should be able do great stuff with this book as insperation.   [edited by - dark_nebula on February 16, 2004 7:24:50 AM];  Thanks for the response guys. I''m going to order the book of Amazon but with the knowledge that I''ll be unable to see the demos running properly. I''m not too concerned though, if the theory is up to scrath! 