The Graphics Programming Black Book by Michael Abrash is a compilation of the author's earlier works on graphics programming and assembly language, as well as earlier essays for Dr. Dobb's magazine.
The reader can see some of the larger trends in the author's work over the years, such as a reliance on profiling to test code and creative thinking to improve performance wherever possible, even though much of the book is now outdated (such as 8088/286/386 assembly language optimization and VGA graphics programming).
This paper documents the author's methods for optimizing code for the developing line of Intel CPUs, from the 8088 up to the early Pentium lines, and covers assembler optimization for a range of problems, including searching algorithms. The book's final few chapters, which explore some of the technologies used in the well-known id Corporation titles Doom and Quake 3-D, are more pertinent (where the author worked).
We explain optimized approaches to texture mapping, hidden surface removal, and Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) tree-based 3-D graphics issues.
Direct3D and VRML are not included, but it is obvious that game programmers like the author will keep finding novel methods to push the boundaries of the most recent hardware.
This book is not intended for general readers; rather, it is obviously aimed at serious assembly language programmers and game developers.
