3D Puzzles Books

The 3D stereograms in this book are so artfully drawn from the artists' imaginations that viewing them becomes an act of meditation. There is a kind of magic window effect that provides an utterly unique way of focusing the mind. I used to think that one stereogram was pretty much like the next until I saw the works of Levine and Priester. These two artists have taken this specialized art form to a whole new level, where beauty, reflection, and sheer entertainment coalesce into a pleasing aftereffect.

Levine & Priester already have a couple of books out there, but I far prefer their latest, Hidden Treasures 3D Stereograms. I highly recommend this book to anyone with the interest and the patience to learn how to view 3D stereograms. It's worth the effort, believe me!

Interacitve Games to Keep your mind Sharp.
A take-it-with-you book to provide endless hours of interest and intrgue.
Definitely worth the price.

The most impressive characteristic of this book is how the designers have been able to incorporate three-dimensional puzzles into the structure. Many of the puzzles pop-up into form when you open the page and you can physically manipulate the pieces to work through the puzzle. The puzzles are:

*) Hog-tied in the saloon - a puzzle where two card dealers are supposedly tied together
*) Babylon - a puzzle where you slide numbered tokens from one side to another never putting a larger number on top of a smaller number
*) Jumping frogs - sliders containing a green frog on one end and an orange frog on the other are to be moved from one configuration to another without violating intermediate rules
*) Four-square fold - a slider puzzle where each slider has four colored sections
*) Crossing the bridge - four blue cars are on one side and four red cars on the other and the goal is to reverse which color is on which side
*) Pyramaze - a maze where you are to traverse a three-dimensional pyramidal maze
*) The pairing maze - in this case the goal is to move colored balls along a maze into a selective rearrangement
*) Hampton court maze - a replica of the hedge maze of the time of Henry VIII.
*) The beer glass puzzle - in this case the goal is to rearrange sliders so that a man disappears and a glass of beer appears
*) Get off the Earth - the classic Sam Loyd puzzled of the disappearing Chinese warrior
*) Double image, a folding jigsaw puzzle - in this case you are to take the pieces of a picture of the Mona Lisa and fold it so that it displays a picture of Marilyn Monroe
*) The folding magic square - in this case, you are to fold a flat structure so that the colors in the cells have a particular alignment
*) The Lo-Shu magic square - placing numbers in a 3 x 3 grid to make a classic magic square
*) The magic square - order four - in this case you are to fill in the remaining cells of a 4 x 4 grid to make a magic square
*) The flexi-square - you are to fold a piece of paper to make particular designs
*) Minimal length ruler - you are to slide markers to positions on a ruler so that you can measure every distance from 1 to 16 units
*) Minimal length circles - a circle is divided into seven equal distances and your goal is to place three markers on the circle so that all distances from 1 through 7 can be measured
*)Love me, love me not - you start by placing 13 bee markers in the center and you are to move them to an alternate configuration without violating any rules
*) The illusion wheel - a series of line segments is drawn with markings on them. Your goals is to determine which segment is divided exactly in half by a marking
*) The magic room - in this case you are to fold a three-dimensional structure so that it has a specific configuration
*) Space rescue - a set of 49 images of space aliens is given and you spin a spinner. The first person to recognize the image having the characteristics of where the spinner landed is the winner
*) The great escape - in this case the user is to manipulate a figure containing an image of Harry Houdini so that it can escape

Solutions to all of the puzzles are included if you get frustrated. As is generally the case when I encounter puzzle books, I spent a lot of time working through these puzzles, although I can't really complain. Time spent working quality puzzles is by definition not time wasted.

I am always amazed as to how they produce the images. However it is done, it provides great fun.

I think that this is a good product, just like other books that I own. So if you have time to look at it, this will help you relax. If you never been able to see the images have patience sometimes it takes a while read the instruction on how to do it, there are three different ways, so one of those should work for you, it's just a matter of time. Once you are able to see the images it will become easier to see there rest of the pics I remember I used to think that this stuff was fake cause I could never see I spend 3 hours looking at one page and never got it, but it was because I kept trying to look for something, what work for me was to look past the image and that would let the 3d image pop out.

The last book like this that I reviewed was Magic Eye II ;which I reviewed on May 25,2004. That book was published in 1994 ,several years after we first became familiar with these 3-D or Stereograms. This book was published in 2004 and we can see that there has been considerable advances in this artform.The one characteristic of these pictures has been that thay are easy to identify because of the repeatibility of about 6 panels or bands. This has always been a dead giveway.
The thing most noticeable is that the bands are much less obvious.The picture on page 11 is so good that one would hardly suspect as having floating beans within it.The picture on page 33 is very obviously a 3-D picture but at the same time is an excellent "floater".Of all the pictures,the one of the gravel on page 39 was the most interesting to me. It is so good,that one would likely not even suspect it to be a 3-D picture,unless it was in a book like this.I guess the ultimate would be when a picture is created that shows no signs of repeatibility at all. At that point you would have the perfect "hidden picture".
By far the biggest difference with this book in in the claims of how these images can be used to improve vision and all other sorts of things. The book is sprinkled with many testimonials from people who have experienced great things.I have considerable problem with accepting this stuff without the research and science to back it up.Otherwise;it has to remain in the area of "alternative medicine".It does not surprise me that there is a Disclaimer to the claims on page 2.
Nonetheless this is a good book showing how much 3-D pictures have improved since the early 90's.

I was always able to see the "floater" images within the pictures. The books calls this "divergence". When I do it, totally relax my eyes, I see the image within seconds. The problem for me was when I read in this particular MagicEye that I need to practice convergence. In other words, bringing the eyes together, and seeing the opposite of the 3D image. It's like a sunken image. At first, I had pain from doing this. It caused me eye strain, which was similar to eye strain I always feel after reading or sitting in front of the PC for a period of time. Now, after practicing the techniques to increase convergence (i.e. the pencil moving in and out for 10 seconds), I see the image, and more important, no more eye strain! It does work, or at least it worked for me..........

The pictures in this book are good, but beware! About every other page is a full page of text, of self-gloating from the authors! I am sure that their arms are tired from patting themselves on the back; and there are a bunch of stupid quotes from supposed customers of how their pictures cure cancer and the like... I would say that half of the book is a waste of paper because of this. I do not think I would buy this book again, false advertising.

I always love it when scientists and engineers, and mathematicians come along and review a game programming book. They go "oh! This is just ALL WRONG!!! AHHH!!!"

Please keep in mind this book is for physics simulations for video games. We can't yet simulate the universe on an atomic scale in a PC game and expect a frame rate of more than 1 frame per millenium at this point in time.

I own all all of Dr. Eberly's books and I find them all my most useful books. The only other graphics book I use alot is my Graphics programming by James Foley. The nice thing about Dr. Eberly's book is that the code for most of this is on his website, so if you get stuck on how to implement something looking at the source code can help you further understand the maths and equations. I recommend to buy this if you are willing to put in the effort to understand the maths, but if you have a phd already you might not need it than.

This is a great book on physics simulation, covering most of the mathematical methods and tricks. Some people would complain that's very mathematically intensive, but I don't see another way to do it without being superficial. This book, however, goes very deep in almost every aspect of rigid body simulation, and covers some aspects of non-rigid body simulation as well, which is an emerging trend.

I would suggest only one change to it: there's a chapter on shaders which is pretty much useless - it's very superficial as it doesn't teach shader writing, and doesn't teach hwo to use shaders for physics - I'd suggest that it be changed to include GPGPU methods for physics instead.

Other than that, the book is great, and the only one I've seen that actually covers heavy-duty, real-world simulation and not just silly approximations for special cases.

This book has much good information if you know exactly what you are looking for. However, its tone is very dry and academic and lacks a big picture perspective. It glosses over essential information on mechanics and in just 200 pages covers Newtonian and Lagrangian concepts. There are lots of equations, but the examples all use variables, thus making the examples no clearer than the equations they are supposed to be illustrating. There are no numerical examples at all.

Chapter 5, on physics engines, which the author himself says is the heart of the book, is woefully inadequate. He talks about the equations and features he wants to implement, and shows code snippets for the features, but there is one essential component that is missing - block diagrams and accompanying discussions that illustrate how all of these pieces fit together. A crate full of clearly labeled mechanical parts does not an automobile make.

Next we come to one of my areas of interest and one of the main reasons I bought this book in the first place - Chapter 6, "Physics and Shader Programs". The author certainly hits some fascinating topics - ocean waves, skin and bones animation, etc. However, once again the author skips what is between the basic physics equations that comprise these effects and the implementation of these equations and effects in code. The code that he does show is in NVidia's Cg language. So if you don't know Cg, the code is undecipherable. I would have preferred algorithmic pseudocode. Then I could implement the effects in the language of my choice.

The last four chapters of the book take an uptick in quality. These chapters are strictly on numerical methods, and I can't believe they are written by the same author that wrote the first six chapters. There are fairly good discussions and examples on the subjects of linear and mathematical programming, ordinary differential equations, numerical methods, and quaternions, and also how these mathematical methods fit into solving problems in physics. They are not self-contained tutorials, but they are a good summary and review for the physics student who has already had some exposure.

I really can't recommend this book as anything but a reference. Its merits are mainly the tying of mathematical methods to physics and good basic discussions on some topics. But where the rubber meets the road - answering the questions of "How does one go about building a physics engine?" and "How do I implement physics within the confines of a computer game?" I think that this book is a failure. I give it three stars only because the author obviously put a lot of effort into the work, and what he does write is not incorrect.

If you are interested in game physics I recommend "Physics for Game Programmers" by Grant Palmer. It takes an engineer's viewpoint of the subject and features plenty of examples in Java of how to simulate explosions, lasers, and the motion of various classes of vehicles. There is no discussion of game engines, though. A good reference on college level physics can be found in the most recent edition of Schaum's Outline of College Physics.

My interest is physics and physics simulations, not gaming per se...so my observations should be viewed in that light.

The main problem with this book is the treatment is incomplete, superficial, or just wrong (from a physics/math point of view), and the typical programmer/computer scientist is not likely to know it. I am reminded of the great fluid dynamicist von Karmen's definition of an engineer as that person who perpetuates the mistakes made by the previous generation. The REASON a game programmer can get away with this is that he is not testing his results by real experiment...his world is a computer generated simulation with arbitrary approximations to physical laws that the programmer deems to impose.

The other problem is that there are usually a multitude of techniques that one can pick to solve a given mechanics problem...and what would have been really valuable is if the author had shown why a particular method is better (for example, Newton's Laws vs. Lagrange's Equations) when the time comes to code the algorithm. We are not looking for Eberly primarily to teach us physics (but if he makes the attempt, it should be correct!)-that is always going to be the job of physics courses. Instead, he needs to tell us which method is useful for coding and why-this, sadly, he has not done.

As an illustration of what I mean...look at how Petzold in `Programming Windows with C#' discuss the elementary process of using GDI+ to draw a curve. There are two approaches, using rectangular coordinates, or using parametric equations (polar coordinates). Petzold explains WHY the parametric approach is superior from a programming point of view.

Any advanced sophomore or junior physics student will know most of the physics presented here (classical mechanics)...but in addition, they will also know the CORRECT statement of conservation of angular momentum (the author got it wrong) ...AND they will have a deeper understanding, because they will have likely studied something like Marion's Classical Dynamics which is rigorous and physical. Especially egregious is Eberly's twice incorrectly defining an inertial reference frame. In classical mechanics, an inertial reference frame is one in which Newton's laws are valid.

Same comment for the math...The math is maybe sophomore/junior level (except for the Quaternions)...but it is not rigorous nor is it motivated, and sometimes it is wrong. Compare Eberly's terse treatment of the delta function with Marion's motivated and physical discussion. Also, we see things like interchange of limits and integration, without explaining when this is mathematically legal. Then there is the unmotivated vector spaces treatment. Eberly goes to the effort to define a field, but then restricts his definition of a vector space to having real coefficients...Then why bother defining fields if you are not going to use them. We are given the mathematician's definition of the determinant (i.e., the unique, alternating, n-linear function with identity) but this is completely useless from a computational view! If Eberly wants to present some advanced linear algebra, then some tensor analysis would have served the game programmer better, as it is often used in continuum mechanics and fluids, neither of which are discussed by the author. He had a perfect opportunity in the Affine Algebra chapter when he stumbles upon the Levi-Civita tensor, which he then dismisses as unimportant! The Affine Algebra chapter is really bad from both a physics and a geometry view. First, a physicist does not think of a vector as something with direction and magnitude, and a geometer is more inclined to think of them as a derivation. Second, affine spaces are too weak a tool to use to distinuish points from vectors, though we do mod out the origin..this really needs a manifold with vector fields and parallel translation. Third, linear algebra is the study of vector spaces and isomorphism.

There is a chapter on numerical methods, but again incomplete! We should have at least got Numerov's method and some Monte Carlo techniques.

The chapter on shading is ridiculous from a physics point of view. Essentially we have Snell's law, and a cursory reference to Fresnel and that's it...Evidently, the author was not up to discussing some real physics ala Maxwell. Why spend so much time on classical mechanics, and then almost totally dismiss optics with a non-physical discussion? We don't even get Huygens principal. But we do get a wrong definition of polarization of light.Thankfully, he did not try to define helicity.

In summary, this book has two uses:
1) It presents a list of physics and some numerical methods which the game programmer will find useful, and which he will then go ELSEWHERE to actually learn. (I can recommend Landau (of OSU, not Russia) "Computational Physics" and also the CUPS Physics Simulations books for excellent starters.)
2) There is the happy possibility that a budding game programmer, in his pursuit of the knowledge to build a better computer game, will discover the much more interesting game called Physics.

Undoubtedly this is a must-have for people who are serious about developing real-time computer graphics simulations with physically based modeling.

This book can be compared with Coutinho's "Dynamic Simulations of Multibody Systems". I believe the latter covers more materials, but Eberly's is easier to read. The book would be almost sufficient if you also have his previous book "3D Game Engine Design".

I am not sure why the author wrote chapter 4 and 6. I suppose these can be left out. It would have been more compact.

I really love these books. I am fascinated by the technique used to get the 3-d affect. I have everyone out.

My 7 and 9 year olds, as well as all their cousins, enjoy the Magic Eye books. So I ordered a couple for Christmas. One good thing is that to help you know if you're seeing the correct image, they have black and white answers in the back. There is something vaguely disturbing in the "answers" section of this one. For page 28, the answer shows a "Chainsaw Teddy," an image of a teddy bear getting it's head cut off by a chainsaw. The actual image on page 28 is a baseball player, catcher, and umpire. Very odd. Also in the answers section, for page 5, the cupid with his arm stretched in front of him has the caption: "(rhymes with tubby) Rub." (I don't know if I can put that in a review) If you don't mind these things, this is a fine book. It seems to me that someone slipped something in that the editors didn't catch, or maybe I got a book that wasn't supposed to be put out. I don't think I'll be giving it to my children. I would opt for the other Magic Eye books. I'm really not sure how to rate it, so I gave it 3 stars. The illusions are great, there's just something wrong in the answers section.

MY HUSBAND LOVES THESE MAGIC EYE PICTURES. SO WHEN HE TOLD ME ABOUT THEM, I LOOKED ON LINE WITH AMAZON, AND THERE THEY WERE. WE ORDERED TWO AND ARE HAVING A BALL WITH THEM. OUR GRANDKIDS REALLY HAVE FUN TRYING TO FIND THE HIDDEN 3-D PICTURE.

DANA AND CRYSTLE SALISBURY
FLORIDA

I love the Magic Eye series... I would recomend this book for almost any coffee table. The illusions are both fun and engaging, definatly a conversation starter.

I love all the "Magic Eye" books. Trust me, if you bring this (or any one of the "Magic Eye" books out at a party you will have loads of fun! Everyone just races to see the images! There are a lot of folks who have tried to create 3d images, but only one remains the forerunner in this innovative area and that's "Magic Eye"!! You creative folks at "Magic Eye" are just AWESOME. I give "Magic Eye 111 an A plus!!

This book is a good book just for the fact that it has all the cube's from 2 x2 , 4 x 4. 5x5, and 3 x3 but it fails in providing a simple non technical and even easy technical solution. It could be better explained and less technical. I rate it two stars for its difficulty in solution.

While there is a ton of information on the web and YouTube about ways to solve the Rubik's cube, this book distills much of that information into a very concise and easy to learn format that should appeal to a wide range of people. If you just want to learn a beginner's method to solve the cube, you can do that but the book is definitely catered to those who want to go beyond just solving it and teaching how to solve it fast!

I really enjoyed the sections on the 2x2x2, 4x4x4, and 5x5x5 cubes as well and was surprised how easy they were to learn.

I just have two small gripes with the book, both of which have to do with the printing and binding more than the content (which is why I still gave it 5 stars). First, the book has a number of printing errors in it, mostly in the 5x5x5 section. Fortunately if you go to Dan Harris' website he has all the corrections posted. Secondly, it would have been nice to have this book published with spiral binding (even if the book cost more) - it's just impossible to lay it down on a table to look at the algorithms without placing a large heavy object on the book to keep it open.

The book is as concise as it can possibly be, but I'm new to "Rubics cube" and it gets a little over my head in places. The learning curve for the algorithms is a little steep, but with enough practice, and dedication it can be a rewarding experience. The book has a wealth of information about record holders, and the invention of "Rubics cube." If you never solve the cube, the book is still worth the money. I bought two of them, so I would have one that hasn't been written in, and manhandled. If you have an interest in the cube, buy the book.

I had tried to learn the so-called "speed cubing" methods online and had been completely frustrated. Dan Harris lays it all out perfectly: it is very easy to follow and understand. That doesn't mean that the technique is all that easy to learn: with a massive amount of algorithms to memorize it will certainly be an undertaking of some months before you can claim complete mastery of the CFOP method.
The sections on the 2x2, 4x4, and 5x5 cubes are also very easy to follow. There is one typo that I found in the 5x5 chapter. The algorithms in Table 8.3, p125 are wrong: they are written (R r) U (R' r') U (R r) (U2 u2) (R' r') (R r) and (R2 r2) U (R2 r2) U (R2 r2) (U2 u2) (R2 r2). I spent a frustrating 10 minutes trying to figure out why I couldn't complete the centers. I found that the correct algoritms are (R r) U (R' r') U (R r) U2 (R' r') and (R2 r2) U (R2 r2) U (R2 r2) U2 (R2 r2).
At the end of the book there is also a chapter that has algorithms for all sorts of cool patterns that can be applied to an already finished cube.
This is a great book and no true Rubik's fanatic should be without it!

This book seems best suited to people who already know how to solve the cube and who would like to find out how to improve their solutions. In my case, I hit a wall with my homebrew solution at about 60 seconds. While 1 minute solves are nice, it's not impressive in a world where a 20 second solve is not terribly competitive. This book seems to have the solution for that. It's too early to claim success, but what I've worked through so far is very good.

Would this book be suitable for a cubing novice? That's a tough call. The book does start from scratch teaching a basic solution, but I feel other resources online are a little clearer for the absolute beginner. However, a dedicated learner could work entirely from the book. Just keep in mind that pace is very quick, and the author doesn't do that much hand holding.

Would this book be suitable for an experienced speed cuber? That's hard to say, since I'm not in that category. If you follow another solving system, the book should be a very easy introduction to the authors strategy. I suspect that no matter where you are, you'll get a few new algorithms and tricks. There's also the 2x2x2, 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 solutions, which ought to provide additional value to the hardcore cuber.

This book is deceptively short. Although it weighs in at barely 160 pages, there's really a lot of content if you work through the material. It's taken a week to work through the first 50 pages, and that's just the intro material. I suspect it will be months, if not years, before I've even come close to exhausting what the book has to offer. In that regard, it's a tremendous value, and I can wholeheartedly recommend the book.

This book came just in time when i needed it!! It is in great quality, REALLY helpful book! This book is one of those beginner books.

I really like this book. I've only had it a couple of days and I've already learned a lot. I'm not a complete newbie with Lightwave, but even the beginnig chapters of this book are peppered with little tips and tricks. And as always, Albee is just as interested in inspiring the reader as he is in educating. I have Dan Ablan's Inside Lightwave 8 book, which I really like too, but this one seems to be more coherent and connected, with a more consistent throughline. For me personally, I am enjoying the three different methods he presents for head modeling. I think his detail-out method is worth the price of the book alone. Great addition to my ever-growing Lightwave book collection!!

I have been working on Lightwave for about a year. I have prior experience with 3DS Max. In fact, I have also received formal training, at the expense of my employer, on Lightwave 3D 8, but nonetheless I still felt the need to run out and buy several titles on the subject. One of them happened to be this book.

First off, the book is loaded with a ton of -- yes! -- essential information! Likewise, the basics are covered quite thoroughly and in such a way that the reader does not become too overwhelmed. Basic concepts relating to the world of 3D are covered along with Lightwave specific terminology. The author receives high praise from me in this particular area. Spanning 20 chapters, an epilogue, three appendices, and a reasonable index, the book introduces the user to Lightwave.

The tutorials are laid out in a linear and numbered fashion. The reader who is comfortable enough with the program will have no problem with this; however, there are many parts in the book where steps are missing or the illustrations don't seem to match up with what is being presented. Take, for instance, chapter six, step 15 -- the user is instructed to drag a selection box around the top of their model and press the delete key. Seems simple enough, doesn't it? Well, everything is not always as it seems, because the authors seem to have forgotten to instruct the user to change Grid Snap to None under the Display Options | Units window. This is just one example of several in which steps were left out or utterly confusing. Enough of the bad points about the book however, because there are MANY more good ones.

The CD-ROM that comes with the book is also particularly useful, and I've not come across an item that was referenced in the book and not on the disc. There are even points in the book where the user is able to load objects and work from that point to the objective. The appendices in the back of the book are loaded with VERY useful information on an assortment of subjects. Are you looking for plug-ins and programs suggested by the pros? This book has a comprehensive list of them that will get you headed in the right direction, if not to your destination! Are you looking for resources on Lightwave online, such as particular websites? Guess what! This book lists them along with descriptions and screen captures of the sites, such as: Newtek, Flay, CGTalk, and many more!

I would suggest that you pick up this book with the fore-knowledge that you need to have the Lightwave [8] interactive PDF help-file loaded. This is definitely a title that will get you started on the right path to conquering Lightwave and, with diligence, mastering it.

With no experience in 3D modeling, this book helped me get started. It showed me the best way to use the tools in Lightwave as well as some concepts behind modeling\animating. Now I am modeling cars, places, people, and doing some light animation.

The author writes with a sense of humor and personality. Therefore, it's not boring to read. However, it can sometimes be long-winded.

I didn't give it five stars because the author often skips steps. While some steps the author skips because he has gone over them before (which is good), other steps are completely new and necessary yet are omitted. You then waste a lot of time trying to figure out for yourself how to get to the next step.

Overall, if you want to get started with Lightwave, I recommend using this book coupled with the Lightwave help.

I just burned through this book in 2 days... after struggling with Lightwave for weeks, this book made all the fundamental building blocks of the program make sense for me in a way they hadn't before. The book is soft on the animation and dynamics end of things, but with a firmer grasp of all the basic tools, I'm so much more comfortable with the software. It was fun to read and the authors have lots of personal tips and philosophical advice that makes the tutorials more intriguing.

Finally the best book ever written on how to make three dimensional wooden mechanical puzzles is again available. And the format of the CD makes it quite easy to find more than a hundred of Stewart Coffin's beautiful puzzles. The photographs, illustrations and drawings of the puzzles are a visual treat. And he even has information on the selection of wood and woodworking techniques for those that want to make the puzzles. Some of the puzzles can be made with simple hand tools and others require accurate power tools and advanced woodworking skills. But everyone will enjoy this classic book of polyhedral puzzles.

The reviewer who said this book has zero mathematical content must have a different definition of mathematics than I do. True, the book has no formulas, no algebra, no arithmetic, and very few numbers, but it's FULL of combinatorics and geometry, especially symmetry, dissections, and polyhedra. In a sense, this book is nothing BUT math!

If you're at all interested in mathematical puzzles, or symmetry, or geometry, or woodworking, you MUST buy this beautiful book! But if you're looking for a book of numbers and formulas, buy something else.

Has all the math you may need without getting bogged down in formulas. This CD is perfect for both a beginner or a seasoned pro of puzzle theory. This the best resource I have found to date for those interested in either puzzles or geometric studies for fun.

This is a good book iff you're interested in puzzles as toys, or puzzles as art, or puzzles as anything other than a playground for mathematics. Even the recreational mathematician will be disappointed if he or she is hoping for much math content, because there's none whatsoever. And don't interpret "none" as "low level" or "elementary"; we're talking about the empty set here. The only reason I give 2 or 3 stars is that I'm sure the book would be useful to those wanting to see the designs of a number of different puzzles. It does that. It's more of a history and showcase. The author seems to make no pretense about the mathematical content, expect, perhaps, through the title, but the reviews I had read here at Amazon and elsewhere sure did lead me to expect good stuff. T'was a real disappointment.

This book opens up a whole world of possibilities for puzzle enthusiasts! It does a systematic break down of the ideas behind the design of burr puzzles, puzzles whose assembled interlocking pieces form ployhedra. It contains the most amazing puzzles of this sort I've ever seen. If you love puzzles, you'll love this book!!

This book gets right down to business of creating Java ME games without any fluff. By the end of chapter 3, you will be on the way to creating a reusable game class containing a game loop, and chapter 4 gets right into the 2D graphics capabilities of Java Me with an example game. The rest of the book is devoted to 3D game development in Java Me, based on OpenGL ES (M3D). I was extremely happy with this book, and am using it in my mobile course now. This was a welcome find and a good alternative to the misleading Java ME Game Programming book by Flynt.

This book is a very good introductory manual to 3D mobile game development,
with a clear explanation on basilary concepts. It provides a summary on basic
3D mathematical concepts. This is excellent to refresh this topic but not for
learning but, on the other hand, it is not the aim of the book.

The 3D examples have been made with 3DStudio and LightWave but not with Maya
which would have been appreciated considering its use in real world 3D
applications.

The chapter on distribution of the game on the market is really interesting. It
provides practical examples on possible distribution channels on the market.
For instance, the creation of a paypal-enabled web page created to distribute
and sell the mobile game on the market has been really appreciated.

Unfortunately, the porting of the game on the various target devices has been
discussed with superficiality, without any detail, too much generic with very
little usefulness.

It would have been nice to see some screenshots of the implemented games as
examples in the book, just to have a general idea on the final game appeal.

Overall, I highly recommend this book since I effectively learned the basic on
3D mobile game programming.

This book is really very well written and the only one I know on the market of its kind. It's great if you are moving from 2D to 3D J2ME games. I gave it 4, instead of 5, stars firstly, because all the art work is done for Maya, Lightwave, or 3DS. These are very expensive modelling tools. The authors could have used an excellent alternative, Blender, which is just as powerful but free. Secondly, the authors use NetBeans. A better choice might have been Eclipse with the EclipseME plug-in since I believe the Eclipse community is bigger and perhaps more resourceful. Thirdly, there are a number of small errors in the book, particularly in Chapter 7. Finally, speaking of Ch 7, the book is rough going with the math. It's almost as if the authors were afraid to go into more detail knowing many people might be turned off by 3D math. But this seems to me just the place to slow down rather than breeze through the subject. For instance, they don't explain how or why matrix inversion is used nor how it can fail. Then, they go through all this math and don't give example code or even a snippet, of how to use it, for instance, the Transform class. That's too bad. They had this tiger (called 3D math) by the tail and let it go. Actually, to cover more of the math and details of mobile 3D I would recommend Hofele, C., "Mobile 3D Graphics", as a companion text. Hofele is also very good although the focus is less on mobile games than mobile 3D.

Very easy to read and a great way to get started in developing 3d games. Unlike alot of other j2me game developer books it is specific for games and not so much J2ME itself, it provides a create resource for the whole process from developing the game to creating the models.

Recommend to anyone interested in getting started for J2ME 3d game development.

Will be looking forward to your next book.