American Commander "Mac" MacTavish and his international team of scientists and engineers are wrapping up an eighteen-month mission at Mars Base. Without warning, all communication with Earth is mysteriously lost. Mac's egotistical science chief discovers that a massive solar flare has impacted Earth, causing catastrophic damage and most likely political and social upheaval. Unsure if it is safe to return home, Mac decides to wait for the arrival of the Mars 3 spacecraft and the relief crew already en route from Earth. After several weeks with no communication, Mars 3 lands nearby, showing no...

This updated bestseller provides an introduction to programming interactive computer graphics, with an emphasis on game development using DirectX 11. The book is divided into three main parts: basic mathematical tools, fundamental tasks in Direct3D, and techniques and special effects. It includes new Direct3D 11 features such as hardware tessellation, the compute shader, dynamic shader linkage and covers advanced rendering techniques such as screen-space ambient occlusion, level-of-detail handling, cascading shadow maps, volume rendering, and character animation. Includes a companion CD-ROM...

This updated bestseller provides an introduction to programming interactive computer graphics, with an emphasis on game development using DirectX 12. The book is divided into three main parts: basic mathematical tools, fundamental tasks in Direct3D, and techniques and special effects. It shows how to use new Direct12 features such as command lists, pipeline state objects, descriptor heaps and tables, and explicit resource management to reduce CPU overhead and increase scalability across multiple CPU cores. The book covers modern special effects and techniques such as hardware tessellation,...