Rating: 
Summary: Great review
Review: After programming for quite a few years, naturally the topic of terrain rendering came upon me eventually. Before reading this book, I had researched every LOD algorithm covered in the book; however, what makes this book great is the ease at which the algorithms are described, thus making implementation all the more simpler. While covering several tessellation algorithms, the book extends its literature by discussing and providing much sample source code for great effects that many beginners would be lost in understanding of, such as liquid simulation, terrain lighting and texturing, sky domes, etc. Although, the book certainly isn't for the fairly advanced graphics programmers, it's great for an aspiring coder.
Rating: 
Summary: another stupid book!
Review: Don't buy this book. After I read the first a couple of chapters, my impression is either the author doesn't know exactly about the subject or the kid is so genious that he thinks everybody can understand what he seems to understand.
For example, while explaining detail map, there is no explanation for background theoy of detail map. Instead, the author just says some stupid words about detail map and shows a pictire saying "Wow! it looks better!". All right, if I do just a simple cut and paste of OpenGL code, I can do that. But does it what you want? We want to understand what's going on behind the scenes. In my experience, this kinf of writing happens either when you don't understand something exactly or when you don't know how to explain something logically.
One good thing about this book is its content list. By reading the content list of the book, you get to know what you should do to implement a terrain engine. And for this respect, this book did a good job. But isn't it too expensive to pay the bucks for a couple of pages of content list? I'd rather go to Border's book store and read only the content list.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Introduction to 3D Terrain Rendering
Review: Finally! A book dedicated to terrain programming, designed to take a beginner, like myself, with no terrain knowledge, all the way to coding several of the coolest terrain algorithms around! Focus on 3D Terrain Programming, although small, manages to pack a ton of information inside its pages. Trent also writes with a very easy-to-understand writing style, that is easy-going and never overwhelming!The book starts out with some very simple chapters, the first of which being an introduction to the field of terrain rendering. The second chapter covers height map loading/saving, and also using two algorithms to create height maps. The third and fourth chapter cover texturing and lighting. The second part of the book (which takes up a large bulk of the pages) is where all the really cool stuff comes in, such as the book's main three terrain algorithms: geomipmapping, a quadtree algorithm, and the never-before-seen ROAM 2.0! All three algorithms are covered in plain english and use lots of figure and diagrams to visually accompany the explanations. Trent also uses a LOT of demos to accompany each major explanation, making everything even easier to understand. And the final chapter of the book is a compilation of several techniques to improve an outdoor scene (rain effects, water, skyboxes/spheres, and more). Overall, I recommend this book to anyone looking for a solid introduction to terrain rendering.
Rating: 
Summary: A simplistic approach to a complicated subject
Review: First of all, Polack's writing style is very annoying. He tries to make his writing "hip" by randomly adding in references to pop culture. It just doesn't work. It makes the book harder to read. At worst, his style is insulting. Style aside, the content of the book is not bad. It shows you the main concepts in terrain rendering. Three popular Level of Detail algo's are presented: ROAM, Geomipmapping, and quadtree rendering. The implementation details are pretty much left to the reader (or you can read his code in the CD-ROM). You WILL have to read the terrain whitepapers and understand them (also on the CD). The book is basically for the person who knows a bit about gfx programming (OpenGL, Direct3D, or whatever) and wants to get his/her feet wet in terrain rendering. If you have already read the geomipmapping whitepaper and understand its concept, you will find this book useless.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad
Review: First of all, Polack's writing style is very annoying. He tries to make his writing "hip" by randomly adding in references to pop culture. It just doesn't work. It makes the book harder to read. At worst, his style is insulting. Style aside, the content of the book is not bad. It shows you the main concepts in terrain rendering. Three popular Level of Detail algo's are presented: ROAM, Geomipmapping, and quadtree rendering. The implementation details are pretty much left to the reader (or you can read his code in the CD-ROM). You WILL have to read the terrain whitepapers and understand them (also on the CD). The book is basically for the person who knows a bit about gfx programming (OpenGL, Direct3D, or whatever) and wants to get his/her feet wet in terrain rendering. If you have already read the geomipmapping whitepaper and understand its concept, you will find this book useless.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad
Review: First of all, Polack's writing style is very annoying. He tries to make his writing "hip" by randomly adding in references to pop culture. It just doesn't work. It makes the book harder to read. At worst, his style is insulting. Style aside, the content of the book is not bad. It shows you the main concepts in terrain rendering. Three popular Level of Detail algo's are presented: ROAM, Geomipmapping, and quadtree rendering. The implementation details are pretty much left to the reader (or you can read his code in the CD-ROM). You WILL have to read the terrain whitepapers and understand them (also on the CD). The book is basically for the person who knows a bit about gfx programming (OpenGL, Direct3D, or whatever) and wants to get his/her feet wet in terrain rendering. If you have already read the geomipmapping whitepaper and understand its concept, you will find this book useless.
Rating:
Summary: Highly recommend for OGL terrain rendering
Review: I am a new programmer starting out in the world of OpenGL and terrain rendering. I would highly recommend this book to anyone that wants to get into this field, it is a great beginners book on terrain algorithms and passes on experiences with problems that may pop up. nehe.gamedev.net and gametutorials.com while good starting points, do not delve into the detail this book does about terrain algorithms, I guess the reviewer that stated that didn't read past chapter 3.
Rating:
Summary: It should be called "Stories about terrain for teenagers"
Review: I am beginner to terrain programming but:
If you want to learn how to load heightmap or to generate it, this book is for you. If you want to learn something about algorithms, you would bless whitepapers after reading that. Trents explanations on algorithms are kind of:
"Phew! That's a lot of pseudo-code and lot of ugly little bit shifting/masking ops! Well, never fear. It's all a lot simpler than it looks." - explanation to extremely hard to understand code (a lot of k,cx,ix, (index==0?1:-1)&3 type of code, etc) Style of this book gives me idea that it was written for about 15-year old teenagers, his jokes are even not funny at all. (about 10% of book are his jokes)
Code is pretty slow and he USES OPENGL, making his programs completly useless for game developers. I'm really disapointed wasting my money. I gave 2 stars because now I know few ways for generating heightmaps and for whitepapers available to download for free from elsewhere...
Rating:
Summary: Not so good.
Review: I bought 1 in GDC this year(2003).
This book is terriable!
If you see through the code, there are lots of mistakes in it.
Some serious C++ programming problems you can also find in the code. Sometimes, I want to figure out what did Trent try to say, I seek code fragments for help, but It only drives me crazy to fix up all errors he had made. But thanks that, I get better understanding. :-)
Maybe I'm too strict with a teenager arthur, but before place your order, you've better to know that!
Rating:
Summary: Uses OpenGL
Review: I bought this book thinking it would uses DirectX but it uses OpenGL. Also, the demos run very slowly. No use of index buffers. I was pretty disappointed.
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