The full color hardcover text is 816 pages and includes a CD-ROM that includes working demos and source for most of the articles presented in the book. For example, the natural effects part contains chapters on water caustics, Perlin noise, creating realistic fire, and diffraction just to name a few.Generally, each chapter has an introduction, a background with some mathematics, an implementation occasionally with some partial source code, a conclusion, and key references. While the CD contains over 600 MB of examples from the text, it provided only 23 of the 42 topics covered in the book. The majority of the contributors are from the Nvidia Corporation which causes the book to bias toward their hardware and developer tools. As the material is just enough to get one started, the subject treatment may disappoint some readers seeking to apply the clever and unique techniques presented in the book directly or those hoping to use the book as an opportunity to learn some of the advanced features provided in a programming graphical processing unit.Very hard to readAtricles are teribly organaized and nothing is followed through. Ohh and yes book is very nicely printed, fully in color.Very good!!!One of the rare books I found helpfull, it goes through important details and doesn't stop at junks. This book should be a university reference that teach real-time special effects.I highly advise it to 3D and game programmers.Wow!Addison-Wesley and nVIDIA went all out on this book. To understand what a particular algorithm is trying to do with color you needn't go to the center of the book, the graphic is right there.The content of the book is somewhat mixed. The very next chapter, on high-quality filtering, weighing in at 25 pages has a better balance of overview and detail.Despite it's inconsistencies the book is still a wonderful resource and, frankly, a nice coffee table book to boot. Bravo AW and nVIDIA.A Killer Book for HARD CORE ProgrammersHard core graphics programming is definitely an area that separates the men from the boys. If your idea of graphics programming is making a ball bounce across the screen in Flash or Powerpoint, avoid this book. If you are a die hard programmer with a strong mathematical background looking to create some really kick a33 effects, this book is made for you.The background stuff: There are just under 50 authors that have collaborated to create this book. The whole book is about 800 pages including intro/indexes et al.I really liked the book, but there's two things wrong with it. Like I mentioned, if there's a cool special effect in a video game or movie, this book shows you how to do it. The book dedicates 3 Chapters (12, 13 & 14) to the subject and it's discussion is superb. The code accompanying the book includes everything for the chapter, but recreating my Cityscape wasn't happening.