Rating: 
Summary: Great book
Review: This is a great book, though I'm a long time fan of dave eberly, having used portions of his magic software for a long time. Its not aimed at the junior level guy, but its worthwhile getting your teeth into it, anyone who thinks the math is too much is going to be getting rapidly out of their depth as a games engine programmer. I prefer a style slightly lighter than this, but no one ever said this book was a coffee table reader. He has put a lot of work into this book and engine. I bought it as a small way of thanking him for magic, but primarily because its a great book. Bottom line, yes its math intensive (and he makes that clear in the synopsis) , but its well worth it for the clear reference and structure it provides (as well as the code). Looking forward to another book from him.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but needs some enhancements on chapther 4
Review: I started studying real-time 3d computer graphics about 4 months ago. I have some knowledge of 3d mathematics(yes, a beginning level, of course ^^). And think that the mathematics this book explains is not so complicated and difficult in principle. My opinion is you(including myself) can digest the mathematics in the book step by step, if not all at once.As a newbie, but I feel that the book needs more thorough explanation of the scene graph management system in the chapther 4. Of course, the code in the CD and the web site says everything. But the code in the "Engine(core of the scene graph management)" component could seem rather complicated to a first timer. For a newbie, it would have been better if it had contained one or more concrete examples of a scene and then the resulting scene graph(s) of the scene(s), and then the detailed explanation(s) of the example scene graph(s). So to speak, I think the volume of chapther 4 of the book shoud be doubled or so(^_^). That is my requirements on the book. Concluding words : The book deserves five stars or more.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but does not deliver what I expected
Review: To be breif, I would change the name of the book to "3D Game Engine Implementation". It Deals with only a few design issues, while dealing extensively with methods of implementing engine components. A more thorough examination of engine structure would be desirable (Considering there is "Engine Design" in the title). Still it is a very usefull book. I must warn you that it is VERY intimidating for someone who has never written very much 3D code before. Prepare to do A LOT of research on the net.
Rating: 
Summary: TOTAL DELUSION
Review: Yes, this is not a book for humans, but the author explain things in a way that makes it even more complicated. But the biggest disappointment is the cd: NOT EVEN 1 working example, a working opengl project ... NOTHING of all that! If you want to use their pieces of code, you have to create a new project and make a lot of arrangments. By the way the cd is only 45 mbytes, so ... that is it !
Rating:
Summary: Too complicated
Review: This is not a book for common humans.For understand it you need to be a mathematic scientist! This book use the most difficult mathematic concepts to illustrate simply 3d programming technics. I have bought many other books (real better of this) on this sites and I suggest you to try to find another book. Try using this keywords "Game Programming" ,stay sure you'll find what you're looking for.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: There are so many wonderful things, and I'll mention a few. First, we have a great author. The man behind the book, David Eberly, is very respectable and is a perfectly suitable author for this book. He's got a Ph.D. in mathematics AND in computer science, and has published quite a few papers on graphics, image processing, etc. He was also one of the principle engineers behind the versatile NetImmerse engine from NDL. CODE! You get source code to a veritably "complete" engine/library. Every bit of this huge glut of code is usable, easily understandable and modular enough to be easily pulled out and placed into your projects. The "WildMagic" code covers damned near any topic you could think of, including progressive meshes, terrain rendering, support for multiple graphics APIs, many forms of collision and bounding-volume techniques, visibility techniques, and more. I don't agree that having a grasp of the mathematical concepts behind the scenes would mean you wouldn't gain anything from this book. There's a huge difference between math and the algorithmic application of math. Applying algorithms to real-world projects takes research and hard work, which this book carries you through. While there is a lot of math presented in the book, this should NOT be taken as a an attempt at an academic text - the math and algorithms presented were designed for, and WORKS in, real-time applications. Everything is quite understandable at the same time. Also, this book is geared toward high-speed techniques - toward game development - hence the title of the book. Foley & Van Dam is, IMHO a heady general graphics text that pays no real heed to real-time applications. True, the book doesn't cover every possible technique or variation thereof (doing so would require a much larger book, mind you), but it does cover almost everything that games use these days. I agree that the title is a SLIGHT misnomer - it does discuss pretty much every component of an engine, but there is less discussion on designing the infrastructure for these components - this isn't such a significant thing, as these topics are discussed largely in the context of the presented code-base. The appendix A does cover this, and quite dilligently - it's a very long appendix. It is not reasonable, however, to expect ANY book to have the huge graphics depth of Foley & Van Dam, the architectural discussion from, say, Large Scale C++, and other topics - you just can't expect a single book covering a range of topics to match the breadth of "a dozen other books", including books that specialize in one area. Lets make fair comparisons. All in all I'm VERY happy with my purchase, and would be very inclined to buy any books that Eberly may write in the future.
Rating:
Summary: A decent reference.
Review: I work in the gaming industry as an engine programmer. I would have to place this book more in the 'intermediate' range for engine programming. While not intended for beginners, (and there are all too many beginner books out there, so if you are a beginner, pick another book.), I also have to say that it does not really go in to great depth on the more cutting edge technology being used in game development today. If you used the methods in this book as is, you could end up with something akin to Quake 1 engine with no hardware optimization if you pulled everything together correctly. But there are SO many more things being done graphically right now, many of which are not included in this book whatsoever, that I have to give the book 4 stars because it's very well written, but it lacks cutting edge concepts. If you want a good suggested strategy, start with this book if you are an advanced programmer with intermediate game engine programming experience, and then use the internet to hit all those fine game programming resources around the web, like NVidia's website, and the many other sites dedicated to game programming, it's almost endless. But don't expect this book to be a one stop resource for making your game engine, it's not. I think the book achieves it's intended goal, it fills a large gap between begining and intermediate engine programming and stops there, but much of it is also a rehash of the Real Time Rendering book by Haines and Moller, which, by the way, is a good companion to this book since each talks about different topics in different ways.
Rating:
Summary: Priceless!!
Review: If you are thinking of implementing a real-time graphics engine, then this book is a priceless resource. David Eberly had great taste in choosing the topics that he did. However, there are some warnings that go along with this book. This book is not intended for those who know nothing about computer graphics. There are a lot of good books out there that cover the basics. Eberly's book assumes you are comfortable with those books and are ready to cross the gap between where they take you and what you see in modern video games. Also, there is a LOT of ADVANCED mathematics in this book. If you are a little shakey with your math skills, then perhaps it would be best to brush-up on that first. Advanced math concepts are talked about briefly, but used very often.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book for Game Programmers
Review: I recently received my copy of 3D Game Engine Design, and I am very pleased with the vast range of information covered in the book. I made this purchase for I was told the book contains quite an extensive coverage of collision detection (which I found to be true); however, pleasantly, I found the sections covering terrain and character animation to be of great use. It is true that Mr. Eberly takes quite a strong mathematical perspective throughout the book, yet this is essential, for the core of 3D graphics is math. This book in conjunction with Real-Time Rendering (and a linear algebra book if necessary), provides the knowledge necessary to create virtually all one could desire in a game engine. In conclusion, I consider this book a necessity to all interested in 3D game design.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of good material, but very difficult to follow
Review: I hate to give this book three stars, because it was obviously well-intended, but the main problem I think can be summed up in two words: no pictures. Time and again, I would be reading through a detailed mathematical explanation about Axis Aligned Bounding Boxes or lozenges vs. cylinders, and wonder to myself: what the heck is he talking about, and why aren't there any illustrations to show what's going on here? There were very, very few diagrams and/or pictures in the book which could be used to illustrate a concept or discussion. Considering the technical depth of the topics covered, it's an almost embarrasing omission. And for a computer graphics book not to have two illustrations within thirty pages of one another is pretty silly. Not to be unfair, this book does have a lot going for it. If you know a fair amount of linear algebra, set theory and some calculus, then you should be able to glean something from the (well written) chapters. Dr. Eberly does do a good job of hitting on the important facets of a 3D game engine. But without illustrations to drive home the discussions, the book is of limited use. Real Time Rendering by Moller and Haines still sets the standard in this area.
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