Rating: 
Summary: Shameful, incomprehensible disaster
Review: Think of the worst computer book you ever read (I know, there are probably many contenders), and then magnify its faults twofold. You now know pretty much where this book stands.The writing is generally incomprehensible, not because of the many typos, but because the subject matter is presented without the slightest regard to the needs of the "beginner" who's the alleged target audience. Advanced concepts and terminology are briefly mentioned alongside more elementary ones and then never revisited. The writing is so awkward as to present a constant hurdle to comprehension. There's no common thread to the presentation--it's as if a different person wrote each paragraph without having seen what the others had written. Forward and backward references are often completely impossible to follow. And the illustrations are fundamentally useless. This is the worst computer book I have ever read (even "beats" those early Tab books). Save your money, please. I worked with DirectX 3 through 7 and can't begin to imagine what a rank beginner would make of this mess.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible, absolutly worthless
Review: This book is poorly organized, poorly written, its paced way to fast to be called "Beginner", plenty of code is given but its poorly explained. I read the whole book over 1 week and I know about as much as I did before I picked it up. I just got back from returning it. If you are already a cpp guru and a directx guru, then this might be for you. But no one else. The 2 authors credentials in teaching and knowledge of the topic sure dont show through in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Can you say rushed
Review: Yes, I agree. This book lacks coherency. Sometimes as you read it, you will wonder how the heck what the author is saying relates to anything or even what he is reffering to. Books on the subject, however, are scarce and that's why this one did not get an even lower score.
Rating: 
Summary: Not explained well at ALL
Review: This book does not have any coherency at all. The subjects, chapters and notes are all plopped together, seemingly with no apparant cause and no explanation as to why they're there or what they do. If you want a REAL Direct3D book that explains everything from beginning (first Windows program) to end (a powerful Direct3D engine) i highly recommend picking up a copy of The Zen of Direct3D Programming - Walsh, actually in the same seiries as this book, though why you would get this one is beyond me.
Rating:
Summary: Not totally clear, but very helpful
Review: I have to say that my first attempt was to get thru chapter 5 and try the tutorials. The project files on the CD had German folder names, so my Visual c++ compiler didnt recognize it. Some people have made the complaints of not being able to compile some of the examples. When I placed the files in a new C++ project, all was well. My problems with the book were in the way things were explained. I couldnt quite get everything the author whole heartedly talked about (I did read it cover to cover on vacation). Even in saying this, this is not a bad book. I used a few online resources to get some of the basics down and went back to this book. It has taken me a step further than what I could find online. I would recommend going thru the DirectX SDK samples and use MSDN to figure out what the lines you dont understand mean. Once you take this approach and go back to the book, it is very useful. Compared to what's currently available, it's a good foot in the door. Reinforce this book with MSDN, DirectX SDK, and last but not least, the gamedev message boards if you cant figure the issue out for yourself. I don't care what anyone says, but the number of resources available for learning Direct3D 8 is slim. The SDK can leave you at a dead end sometimes, and then it's straight to the message boards. I've found so much more information on OpenGL, that it makes me want to switch sometimes, but I've come too far in DirectX, and I imagine Microsoft will support it more than OpenGL. If this book is used properly, a novice can gain much from it. It's not the answer, but it's a step closer to one. I see this book as a step in the right direction to someday getting a well written book on Direct 3D.
Rating:
Summary: very basic
Review: this book is good for absolute programming beginners, but is very unhelpful for anyone beyond that.. i've found most of the books in this series to be very poorly written and without any fresh new ideas/effects... you can find more useful tutorials online!
Rating:
Summary: not a good book at all
Review: I should have skimmed this book more carefully before buying it. It looks like it was thrown together at the last minute. It's poorly written and doesn't explain many basic concepts. And many of the examples are unnecessarily confusing and misleading. Take the section on texture-addressing modes, starting at p132. What the hell is that radioactive cube doing in all the example pictures? The important part of the picture is the background, and that cube is just in the way, causing confusion about what the picture is trying to illustrate. Also one of the sample programs says that you should use D3DXMatrixLookAtLH() to use a left-handed coordinate system, saying that it offers a very useful camera model, but doesn't say why it is more useful that a right-handed system or what the tradeoffs are. Also look at the picture on p87 showing the up, right, and look vectors. This is really misleading. How are you supposed to know that the right vector points out of the page? I was going to read this book anyway but it got to be too irritating so I am going to look for another book to learn Direct3D. If I already knew direct3d this book might be useful for examples and info about game physics and collision detection, but that's about it.
Rating: 
Summary: Best book yet for 3D Programming in DirectX
Review: This book is everything I was looking for regarding 3D programming for a beginner. It gives detailed explanations for the API calls used in DirectX 8.0, covers the new pixel shading (and why you may not want to use it), and gives a dedicated reader a strong understanding of what goes into programing a 3D engine using DirectX. Honestly, buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Not what i spected
Review: Fellows we still not have good books for Direct3D even in version 8.0, Im tired of spending my money in this kind of books that doesnt teach nothing just over and over same thing, If you want to learn the Api go with in DirectX SDK there are a lot of Docs so you can start easy with it, I think we spect another kind of books for Direct3d kind of Lamothe books but using Direct3d in this day's, Anyway i think i have to use Direct3d by my own, Not help yet with it, or I'll keep just OpenGL for renedring my apps and games thats a Great Api very standard and a lot and a lot of good books, samples, articles and so on!. Sorry Wolfgang F. But comunity spected antoher more useful title.
Rating:
Summary: probably useful but pretty tough to read
Review: I found this book really just too hard to read and I'm a native English speaker (I wonder how that French guy read it so well?). There's a lot of info thrown at you all at once and I found a lot of the explanations truly hard to get through. None of them are laid out clearly and simply. It's written in a kind of caffiene-infused, hyperactive style that mentions a lot of concepts but bounces from one to the next before the first one is solid. And the MS style coding is annoying to those new to 'Microsoft-speak'. Maybe I'm just used to reading O'reilly books. I've returned it at this point but I may buy it again if I can't find anything better. I might check out the similarly geared book by the same publisher on OpenGL.
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