Review by Billy Barron, Delphi Consultants

"The Java 3D API Specification Second Edition" (Addison-Wesley; ISBN 0-201-71041-2) is the full 1.2 version of the Java 3D API by Sowizral, Rushforth, and Deering. I will start this review honestly. I have never been a 3D programmer and I only vaguely understand the comments. The closest I've done is hand written some VRML years ago.

The good thing about this book is that the first chapter covers the goals and the second chapter covers the concepts. These chapters are too short to help you fully understand 3D concepts but it is a starting place at least.

The rest of the book is definitions of different parts of the API such as nodes, behaviors and interactions. Each chapter has a little overview and then goes into method definitions. I did enjoy seeing the fog related structures in the API. I know all about 3D fog from video games.

This is a fairly typical specification book. I think it makes a fine reference book, but it definitely is not a tutorial.