Real-Time Collision Detection (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3-D Technology) | 
 enlarge | Author: Christer Ericson
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Category: Book
List Price: $78.95
Buy New: $58.37
You Save: $20.58 (26%)
New (19) from $58.37
Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 38278
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 593
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 1558607323
Dewey Decimal Number: 794.81526
EAN: 9781558607323
ASIN: 1558607323
Publication Date: December 22, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Written by an expert in the game industry, Christer Ericson's new book is a comprehensive guide to the components of efficient real-time collision detection systems. The book provides the tools and know-how needed to implement industrial-strength collision detection for the highly detailed dynamic environments of applications such as 3D games, virtual reality applications, and physical simulators.
Of the many topics covered, a key focus is on spatial and object partitioning through a wide variety of grids, trees, and sorting methods. The author also presents a large collection of intersection and distance tests for both simple and complex geometric shapes. Sections on vector and matrix algebra provide the background for advanced topics such as Voronoi regions, Minkowski sums, and linear and quadratic programming.
Of utmost importance to programmers but rarely discussed in this much detail in other books are the chapters covering numerical and geometric robustness, both essential topics for collision detection systems. Also unique are the chapters discussing how graphics hardware can assist in collision detection computations and on advanced optimization for modern computer architectures. All in all, this comprehensive book will become the industry standard for years to come.
*Presents algorithms and data structures with wide applications to the fields of game development, virtual reality, physically based simulation, CAD/CAM, architectural and scientific visualization, molecular modeling, engineering simulation, GIS, ray tracing, and more.
*Describes tested, real-world methods, liberally illustrated by C & C++ code.
*Reviews necessary concepts from mathematics and computational geometry, and includes extensive references to other sources and research literature.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Book that every game programmer should read. August 18, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Book that every game programmer should read - it's that simple. While it does focus on collision detection, this subject is so broad it touches multiple other vital areas like linear algebra, spatial partitioning, ray tracing, bounding volumes and more. It's not just a list of equations and algorithms, rather a practical guide on how to implement them in an optimal way. More "general" chapters on numerical robustness and optimizations are pure gold.
The best resource on collision detection that I have encountered October 17, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is an extremely well written text. The examples are clear, and it manages to cover a lot of ground. In my opinion, this book is far better than many of the other collision detection and game-development texts.
Nowhere else will you find as good a reference on shape intersection tests and closest point computations. Ericson covers these topics swiftly and efficiently within the early sections, a task which often occupies the entirety of many lesser books. The coverage of the Gilbert-Johnson-Keerthi algorithm is likewise top-notch.
My main gripe with the book is the chapter on GPU optimization. Its placement didn't seem very logical, and the techniques it contains are quite out of date as of 2007. Fortunately, the rest of the book is so good that it can be easily forgiven.
Overall: Highly recommended.
 Excellent explanations of collision detection algorithms and their optimization July 20, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The first half of this book explains the most popular collision detection functions. The collisions presented are mostly in 3D, but there are also some 2D versions. You can use Amazon's "Search Inside" option and take a look at the content table, which shows a large variety of shape vs shape tests. Most of the functions are explained using advanced math, and that's ok because there is no other way to show were the concepts of the book come from. There is an introductory chapter on the math used in the book, but it isn't enough. In my opinion it would have been better to remove that chapter and add some more explanations and algorithms on dynamic collisions.
Most of the second half of the book deals with the different structures to optimize collision detection queries, showing pros and cons for all of them, so the developer can select the one that best fits it's project. The last part of the book is on hardware optimizations.
I agree with other reviewers the CD doesn't bring enough code, and no executable code at all. What one finds in the CD are the pieces of code exactly as they are printed in the sheets, sorted in files by chapter. In my opinion that presentation makes the author look like he is just adapting the algorithms from other papers. Having runnable code is not just a fancy feature, but a necessity for programmers. With compilable code one can see how it works, getting a better idea of how the algorithms are integrated in the actual graphical engine, and it's also a proof the code has no bugs (otherwise reveals them). I'm removing 1 star only because of this reason, hoping a new edition will enhance the content.
This book saves a lot of research, time and money. Just compare this table of collision tests: http://www.realtimerendering.com/int/ with the book's content. You will see that many of these tests are explained and included in the book (and there are some more not in that table). This book is a great compilation of those algorithms which are pretty dispersed in papers and books.
worth every dollar June 2, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Two things stand out about this author: 1) he drives every discussion toward performance issues, and 2) he provides just enough source code for a developer like me to lock in the concepts. That's a great combo that makes this book a hands-down winner.
I've never worked in gaming. I've been doing CAD/CAE/CAM, mostly with Java and CATIA v4 / STEP data, for ten years. I'm currently involved in a robotics planning project, where I've been able to model all the kinematics of an 8-DOF robot system, but the scale of the collision detection challenges has overwhelmed me...until reading this book.
Best collision book i've seen so far March 3, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I've read MANY collision detection books over the years and this is by far the best one i've seen to teach programmers how to LEARN collision detection from basic tests to highly advanced algorithms.
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