Trent Polack, Focus on 3D Terrain Programming (Premier, 2003)

Not a bad little book, this, but the emphasis here is on "little", especially when one is talking about a programming book. Focus on 3D Terrain Programming clocks in at just 218 pages, which is roughly a third the length such books normally run. This is not necessarily a bad thing, if the author really packs in information, but that's not the case here. There's a lot of overview coupled with an attitude of "you'll figure it out if you go through the code examples on the disc". Which may be perfectly reasonable if you're already acquainted with the basics of terrain programming, but if you're a newbie, look elsewhere to begin. Also, Trent Polack's writing style can be a bit grating at times (he writes books quite like your favorite Goat writes reviews; take that as you will). But there is some decent information to be uncovered here, and the disc is chock full of interesting examples, so you can see what's going on and how it's all done. ***

I consider that book an outrage. His writing style is disgusting. Also, if the author does not know anything about mathematics, why did he write a book like this one? He covers 3 algorithms about terrain, but this topic is much more complex than that! I have read more than 30 articles about other terrain algorithms, including those 3, and they are all much better explained. The ROAM 2.0 algorithm is very bad-explained, I had to understand it by other means.
A complete useless book. Although the young author really has a good future, I don't understand how they let a teenager write such book.

Don't buy this book. After I read the first a couple of chapters, my impression is either the author doesn't know exactly about the subject or the kid is so genious that he thinks everybody can understand what he seems to understand.

For example, while explaining detail map, there is no explanation for background theoy of detail map. Instead, the author just says some stupid words about detail map and shows a pictire saying "Wow! it looks better!". All right, if I do just a simple cut and paste of OpenGL code, I can do that. But does it what you want? We want to understand what's going on behind the scenes. In my experience, this kinf of writing happens either when you don't understand something exactly or when you don't know how to explain something logically.

One good thing about this book is its content list. By reading the content list of the book, you get to know what you should do to implement a terrain engine. And for this respect, this book did a good job. But isn't it too expensive to pay the bucks for a couple of pages of content list? I'd rather go to Border's book store and read only the content list.

This book is and basic introduction to terrain rendering. It gets quick to the point and doesn't care much about the math. If you look for a introduction to terrain rendering and want get your results quickly this is a book for you, especially for this price!!! If you are looking for a profound book about terrain rendering with focus on math, choose another book.

I think many of the reviews here are a bit harsh and miss the intention of this book. The chief complaint of the book is that it does not go into very much detail. It seems to me that this title is intended to be a basic introduction to what is a very complex topic.

Having developed terrain applications for many years, I have a very thorough understanding of how difficult it is to approach this topic. While there are many great books available on the topic that go into much greater and complex detail (see: Musgrave, Perlin, Foley, et al), there has long been a need for a simple, basic introductory text.

This book fills that need.

Rather than inundate the new reader with 1000+ pages of difficult material, Polack gently takes them through the basics of terrain rendering. Using humor (which really isn't as bad as some stuffed shirts would have you believe), he gives good, basic explanations. The accompanying CD contains a lot of good source code, ripe for exploration. An excellent way to learn. For those who haven't been scared off, the original white papers are included for further studying. Polack also includes chapter-by-chapter references for additional reading.

The complaints over the fact that the book uses OpenGL are also a bit silly. The important thing here are the topics and the introduction to their basic principals. Also, OpenGL is more universal than DirectX, giving this book a broader audience. If the need to use DirectX is such a concern, you can always write your own rendering and buffering adapter.

All in all, I heartily recommend this book for anyone interested in getting a start in terrain modelling. Ah, if only it existed when I started out with Musgrave's Texturing and Modeling book! ;)