{"id":1317,"date":"2010-04-27T19:42:40","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T01:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/?p=1317"},"modified":"2010-04-28T15:33:29","modified_gmt":"2010-04-28T21:33:29","slug":"another-introduction-to-ray-tracing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/another-introduction-to-ray-tracing\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Introduction to Ray Tracing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I was waiting around a bit for my younger son’s doctor’s appointment this morning, so I decided to edit a book. I finished it just now, it’s called Another Introduction to Ray Tracing<\/a><\/em>. It’s 471 pages in book form. You can download it for free<\/a>, or order a paperback copy<\/a> from PediaPress<\/a> for $22.84 plus shipping. I won’t earn a dime from it, but since it took me less than two hours to make, no problem.<\/p>\n

So what’s happening here? Due to investigating Alphascript and Betascript publishing<\/a> a month ago, reporting it on Slashdot<\/a>, and following up on a lot of great comments<\/a>, I learnt a number of interesting tidbits. Here’s a rundown.<\/p>\n

First, VDM Publishing itself is sort of a vanity press, but with no cost to the author. It seeks out authors of PhD theses and similar, asking for permission to publish. This is not all that unreasonable: because the works are only published on demand, the authors do not have to pay anything, they even get a few hardcopies for free. Here’s an example from our field<\/a> that I reported on in February. That said, it’s mostly a win for VDM Publishing, who charge steep prices for the resulting works. Such not-quite-books mix in with other books on Amazon. It takes a bit of searching to realize that the work is a thesis and likely could be downloaded for free. A bit misleading, perhaps, but not all that horrifying. Caveat Emptor.<\/p>\n

VDM Publishing also has an imprint called LAP, Lambert Academic Press, which does the same thing, publishing theses such as this one<\/a> by Nasim Sedaghat. With a little Googling you can find Nasim<\/a>, and then find the related paper<\/a> for free.<\/p>\n

VDM’s imprints Alphascript and Betascript Publishing I’ve already described<\/a>, they’re little more than random repackagers of Wikipedia articles. Here’s an example book<\/a>. I posted one-star reviews for a few of these books on Amazon; what’s funny is that the owner of the firm actually responded to my criticism<\/a> (with a one-size-fits-all response in slightly broken English).<\/p>\n

Four weeks ago Alphascript had 38,909 and Betascript 18,289 books listed on Amazon. To my surprise they now have 39,817<\/a> and\u00a018,295<\/a> books, a total increase of only (only!) 914 new books – looks like they’re slowing down. They’ll have to work hard to catch up with Philip M. Parker’s 107,182 books<\/a> or his publishing firm ICON Group International, with 473,668 books<\/a>.\u00a0The New York Times has an interesting article<\/a> about this guy.<\/p>\n

Betascript Publishing has two books found on Amazon related to ray tracing: Ray Tracing (Graphics)<\/a> and Rasterization<\/a> <\/em>(which includes a section on ray tracing). The ray tracing book is 88 pages long and $46, more than 50 cents a page. My book, at $22.84 for 471 pages, is less than a nickel a page. So my new book’s better per pound. I actually worked a little compiling my book, making logical groupings, picking relevant articles, creating chapter headings, the whole nine yards (never did figure out how to make a cover from an existing Wikipedia image, though). The exercise showed me the limits of Wikipedia as a book-making resource: the individual articles are fine for what they are, some are wonderful, and editing them in a somewhat logical flow has some merit. However, there’s no coherence to the final product and there are large gaps between one article and the next. How to generate rays for a given camera? Sorry, not in my book.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Still, it was great to learn of PediaPress<\/a> and the ability to make my own Wikipedia book for free. Poking around their site, I even found a book on 3D computer graphics, called 3D Computer Graphics<\/em><\/a> (catchy, neh?). Seeing others making books, I decided to share my own<\/a>, so now it’s official. Mind you, I haven’t actually read through my book, nor even really checked the flow of articles – no time for that. I mostly grouped by subject and title after identifying likely pages. That said, I do like having a PDF file of all these articles that I can search through.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Obviously authors are not about to be replaced by Betascript books any time soon. If you want to read a real introduction to the topic, a book like Ray Tracing from the Ground Up<\/a> <\/em>might serve you better, even if it is a whole dime a page. This cost\/benefit ratio for a good book is something I’ll never get over, that books are sold at prices that are equivalent to the cost for just an hour or two for a computer programmer’s time and yet yield so much in the right hands.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was waiting around a bit for my younger son’s doctor’s appointment this morning, so I decided to edit a book. I finished it just now, it’s called Another Introduction to Ray Tracing. It’s 471 pages in book form. You can download it for free, or order a paperback copy from PediaPress for $22.84 plus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[388,55,389],"class_list":["post-1317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources","tag-publishing","tag-ray-tracing","tag-wikipedia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1324,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317\/revisions\/1324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}