Product Reviews

Tom Miller's Beginning 3D Game Programming is an outstanding book. It contains errors, poor layout and misleading claims, but if you approach the book in the right way these problems don't matter. If you just want some code that you can type in and try out then you may be disappointed. But if you want a good start on how to use DirectX from C# or any managed code, it is ideal.

The book starts off by looking at complete games, but goes on to look at a set of illustrative examples. It uses the sample framework supplied with the most recent issue of the DirectX SDK. This framework is likely to be developed and should become the standard way of programming DirectX as it reinvents itself as a pure class library.

This book claims to be for the beginner, but it isn't and its attempts to be accessible reduce its value. Still, it's an indispensable resource for anyone who wants to use DirectX from managed .NET code, even if writing 3D games isn't your main objective.