Developing Virtual Reality Applications: Foundations of Effective Design Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Developing Virtual Reality Applications: Foundations of Effective Design? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Developing Virtual Reality Applications: Foundations of Effective Design. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Developing Virtual Reality Applications: Foundations of Effective Design ReviewVirtual Reality is a subdivision of computer graphics and the latter is intensely mathematical. But this book eshews a mathematical bent. Instead it offers a sweeping survey of recent [2008-9] applications of VR. You can easily read this and get a good understanding of where VR is being used. The survey spans both academic and industrial/commercial efforts.
The book is also aided by a heavy use of illustrations, many in colour. Quite appropriate given that we are talking about graphics. The figures greatly help the understanding of the text.
One interesting subtopic is augmented reality. Where typically a user wears a special pair of glasses and walks around the real world. Depending on her location and perhaps orientation, the glasses communicate wirelessly with a GIS-aware database that downloads information to be displayed in an overlay fashion on her vision.Developing Virtual Reality Applications: Foundations of Effective Design Overview
Virtual Reality systems enable organizations to cut costs and time, maintain financial and organizational control over the development process, digitally evaluate products before having them created, and allow for greater creative exploration. In this book, VR developers Alan Craig, William Sherman, and Jeffrey Will examine a comprehensive collection of current,unique, and foundational VR applications in a multitude of fields, such as business, science, medicine, art, entertainment, and public safety among others.

An insider's view of what works, what doesn't work, and why, Developing Virtual Reality Applications explores core technical information and background theory as well as the evolution of key applications from their genesis to their most current form. Developmental techniques are cross-referenced between different applications linking information to describe overall VR trends and fundamental best practices. This synergy, coupled with the most up to date research being conducted, provides a hands-on guide for building applications, and an enhanced, panoramic view of VR development. Developing Virtual Reality Applications is an indispensable one-stop reference for anyone working in this burgeoning field.


Dozens of detailed application descriptions provide practical ideas for VR development in ALL areas of interest!
Development techniques are cross referenced between different application areas, providing fundamental best practices!
Includes a media-rich companion website with hours of footage from application demonstrations


Want to learn more information about Developing Virtual Reality Applications: Foundations of Effective Design?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...

Flash Multiplayer Virtual Worlds Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy Flash Multiplayer Virtual Worlds? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Flash Multiplayer Virtual Worlds. Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

Flash Multiplayer Virtual Worlds ReviewThis is a fantastic book that will give you a solid foundation in building isometric Flash MMOs. It makes a great addition for those who already have Jobe Makar's ActionScript for Multiplayer Games and Virtual Worlds by covering many new topics.
I've been a roleplayer all my life, starting with D&D in the 80s, LARPing in the 90s and internet gaming in the 21st century. My favorite game of all time has to be Neverwinter Nights. I loved it because of the fabulous Aurora toolset it came with that let you create your own virtual world. I spent two months building a "mod" for others to play. And hundreds did. In the end, I got some cheers and jeers and made a few friends. But it always irked me that I would be unable to profit from my creation because the platform I built my game on belonged to someone else. I hoped someone would create an open software system that would allow me to use my own art and build my own worlds.
That brings us to this book. Despite the enormous popularity of Flash social games, there are very few sources that pull back the veil and show step-by-step the code underlying them. This book teaches you how to set up SmartFox Server and create small tiled worlds linked with portals. These zones can then be populated with NPCs who have their own walkpaths and inventories. Character interaction and questing are both covered using dialog trees and keywords. The book also delves into minigames, stores and numerous social features using APIs from Facebook and Twitter. It doesn't cover combat, character stats, gold, spells or crafting, but lets hope the author writes a sequel.
Don't fool yourself into thinking this is going to be easy though. This is high-level Actionscript that will test your coding talent. Also be aware that this book came out a few months before the release of SmartFoxServer 2 which uses Java for server-side scripting. That means the server-side code examples (there are two in the book) may need to be rewritten from ActionScript to Java to work with SFS2.
The book has a few weaknesses. The editors dropped the ball several times with grammar. While the book is well organized, it could have benefited from having chapter checklists. Getting the tutorials up and running is not exactly plug and play. But I have gotten all the way through with 90% of the features intact. The book uses FLAs for content so FlashDevelop users and Adobe Flash Builder 4 owners may need to download Flash Professional trials to use the demo tutorials.
Soon I hope to build my first virtual world. And unlike modding for a game, it will be mine to do with as I will. Thanks, Makzan! And please keep writing!Flash Multiplayer Virtual Worlds OverviewThis is a step-by-step, hands-on guide that is filled with examples and screenshots of building a multiplayer virtual world. The virtual world is built gradually; each chapter in the book sequentially develops the virtual world. The author explains the fundamentals with examples from existing virtual worlds such as Club Penguin, Mole, Dofus, and World of Warcraft. If you are a Flash or an ActionScript developer who wants to build powerful and immersive multiplayer games, this book is for you. This book assumes that you have some experience with ActionScript 3.0.

Want to learn more information about Flash Multiplayer Virtual Worlds?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now

Read More...