Rating: 
Summary: Excellent game physics for beginners
Review: I read this book to bone up on the basis principles of physics, and to understand how they applied in a general sense to computer games. An excellent primer, but as other reviewers here have noted, it will not sufice as a complete tool kit for experienced programmers.
Rating: 
Summary: I could be stoopid, but...
Review: I've been trying for over an hour to get the flight simulator sample provided with this book to do anything remotely realistic; so far, no dice (unless you consider weird wobbles, wild oscillation and almost immediate stalling a good thing.) If the author's example doesn't demonstrate a realistic flight model, how is an ignorant sap like me supposed to develop one?
Rating: 
Summary: Physics De-ruster
Review: If you're a Computer Science major you most likely were forced feed physics in college, and totally forgot about now days. Basically this book gets the rust off your math and physics gears and provides a great deal of formulas for many vehicle models. This book is great for programmers tackling real physics for game engines and simulation models. When I was working on an aircraft lift model this book cut my development time in half, it feed me formulas, examples and code. It saved me time in researching and allowed me to have more time to program and design.
Basically if you look at this book as a reference guide for physics this book is prefect. It's a great resource to have in an engine programmer's library.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book to get you started...
Review: If you're a physicist or aspiring to be one, then this book is not for you. If you are a game programmer then get it. The book cuts right to the chase and specifically focuses on rigid body mechanics, which is what you need to know in order to write realtime simulations for games, without pontificating on too much theoretical stuff.The book reads easily and all the example code is well documented. While the examples use Windows Direct3D, all the physics/simulation code is separate from the GUI code so it's easy to follow. I'd have given this book 5 stars instead of 4 if it weren't for two things: 1) the example code uses Windows (I'm a Mac developer and would, of course, rather see Mac examples); however, like I said, the physics part of the code is standard (c++). 2) the chapters are ordered strangely. I suggest you read the first few chapters (1 - 5) and then skip right to chapters 11-17 to get into the realtime sim. examples. The other chapters are interesting, but can wait until after you've finished chapters 11 - 17. Maybe a future edition will include Mac examples and reorgainze the chapters, but, all in all, this is a good book.
Rating: 
Summary: Rather disappoints on the physics, lots of examples.
Review: It would probably not be impossible to learn the physics you need for your game simulation from this book, but it would be difficult. The presentation often lacks much physical insight. This may be intentional as to make the book read easier to a non-specialist, but I think it is a mistake. As an example, the simple trajectory problem, launch a particle in constant acceleration with no friction, is presented here as four separate problems; launch a particle with target at same height, launch a particle with target higher, launch a particle with target lower and launch a particle horizontally with target lower. No physicist would approach the problem this way, it is absolutely trivial to present them all as the same problem with the same general solution. Occasionally the book lapses with just outright errors. The most serious so far I've seen is the cylinder rolling down a plane without slipping is solved by assuming the frictional force is the static coefficient of friction times the normal force. In fact, the force can be any amount less then this. As a result the solution given has the funny property that it will roll up the plane for small angles. The book isn't all bad, and may well serve it's primary purpose, which I assume, is to give a litany of examples that game developers may paste into their games. It certainly has lots of examples, and most are correct physics, still, perhaps with my bias as a physics professor, I was hoping for a bit more physical insight into the problems.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, yet vague and imprecise
Review: The book does a startlingly good job of covering many areas of game programming that benefit from physics including projectiles, vehicles, and other solid bodies. Some more advanced concepts like fuel burnoff, body shape, and simulation in real time add to the usability of the book. One of the biggest problems with the text is that if your going to jump into a single chapter and code up a sample of just the object being talked about your going to be okay. However, if your going to be deriving your own code and objects based on the material in the book your going to find yourself having a hard time. A great example lies in the first chapter which derives formulas for working with a car, with a fuel tank and driver. Now, first off, the author implements 0 source code for the functions shown in the book. This leaves you as the reader to develop your own functions and test things out, possibly by adding another driver, or implementing a generic method for defining composite bodies. If your technically proficient enough to do this, you'll use the numbers provided to test your code. What do you find? Well, that the numbers the author put in the book are wrong. Since the book is based on precise math and physics, this type of slip-up, especially in a prime example (its the major example for the first chapter), is killer in terms of my trust in the books content. Still, I do recommend buying the book, just prepare yourself for the technical inconsistencies.
Rating:
Summary: Very lacking
Review: This book didn't even come close to meeting my expectations. The text does not go very deep into any of the topics covered. Many of the chapters are extremely short, for example the chapter on "Cars" is only 4 pages long. A lot of the problems discussed are not fully developed. For instance, projectile motion is presented in a non-elegant manner, and some problems like the cylinder rolling down an incline don't give a clean solution. I found Lengyel's book to give these particular problems a much more thorough and accurate treatment, and the main focus of that book isn't even physics.
Rating:
Summary: Impressive
Review: This book is impressive, close every other book!!
All physics formulas and theory that a software engineer developing games or simulators ought to know. However, if you don't have a good math background then you're probably better off buying another more comprehensive book.
Rating:
Summary: A good place to start
Review: This book provides a good starting point for anyone looking to introduce more realistic physics into their game. It provides an overview of the laws of mechanics, focusing on rigid body and particle dynamics. It then takes these principles and applies them to specific simulations which often come up in games, such as projectiles, cars, airplanes, and hovercraft. The math is simplified, so the results are not always completely accurate, but they should be good enough for many games. The book does have several shortcomings which prevent it from being a great book, the most important of which is that the content is fairly limited. It's less than 300 pages, and a significant amount of space (especially in the later chapters) is taken by source code listings. Of course, this is somewhat offset by the book's relatively low price. If you buy this expecting it to be the ultimate guide to physics in games, you'll be disappointed. However, if you buy it as an introduction to physics in games (which how it's intended to be used), I think you'll be happy with it.
Rating:
Summary: i like to see my own reviews
Review: this book was dissapointing to me because i wanted it to be different. boo hoo hoo for me. i also like to show off my surface level knowledge of physics, by criticising someone who actually got off the couch and did something real. i also wanted to point out that i feel my crummy debt ridden nation uses the metric system to no great effect. i guess i should be glad the US doesn't use the metric system or no one would buy my country's dumb products at all. boo hoo hoo for the setting sun.
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