games

So let's focus on the good.

First, it gives a fair intro to HLSL and shader assembly language. That seems hard to come by. Microsoft's documentation, in web-entangled form, is hardly a tutorial. Vendor documentation mostly points to MS standards, but those are hard for us mere peons to acquire in any intelligible form. This isn't a langauge ref book, but will do until I see a real one.

Second, it gives a good bunch of tips'n'tricks, with lots of listings for illumination models, shadows, and fog. The careful reader will look into the references, the places where new knowledge makes its debut, and will be stronger for it. There's also a chapter that devotes itself to v1 vs. v2. vs v3 compatibility and more. Compatibility is the pits - if you've never dealt with it, your career is probably happy and probably very young.

I was looking for something a little different, though. I just wanted the HLSL and assembly references, with versions, with complete syntax and semantics. This gives enough info for me to guess my way through a lot of it, but really does leave me guessing. For example, p.47 talks about the "_bx2" modifier. It shows three different ways to coax the compiler into emitting that suffix. After about ten minutes of looking at source and asm code, I finally figured out what _bx2 meant - something the authors neglected to tell me.

Shader programming is still a [forgive the phrase] dark art. This book offers a few chants and incantations, but does not make it a science. Still, it's the most coherent reference I've seen, and I'm sticking with it.

If you know nothing about the High-Level Shader Language (HLSL), then the information you need is in this book. Unfortunately, it's not a particularly well-written book. It's not horrible either, but it could have used better organization and clearer writing. For example, the "Introduction to the DirectX HLSL" chapter never gives an overall picture of how vertex and pixel shaders interact, and how data flows between them and the hardware. The author jumps right into to discussing shader syntax. Then, when he's barely explained enough to see what's going on, he jumps into a section on optimization, then a section on compatibility details between various shader levels, then he abruptly starts talking about code sequences that generate "_bx2" modifiers, without any set-up or real explanation of why. I realize that each chapter is written by a different person, but all of this random gear-shifting is in the same chapter.

As in any book with many contributors, the quality varies. The chapter on shadow volumes is detailed and useful. But overall I wish there had been emphasis on clear and succinct presentation, and not just what seems to be a stream-of-consciousness approach to covering a huge amount of information.

This is probably the best book for writing Shaders in DirectX 9.0. It starts off with the basic concepts of the language and builds up slowly to very advanced concepts. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants some learn and practice some serious Shader programming.
A note for newbies though. This is a book for advanced readers. People who already have a decent knowledge of DirectX 9.0. This book WILL NOT teach you the basics of DirectX 9.0. It is meant for Shader programming and it does that with great elegance. However, if you are looking for a beginner level book then look for some other book about general DX programming.