Wow! eBook – Blog

Book Description

If you’ve done some Arduino tinkering and wondered how you could incorporate the Kinect—or the other way around—then this book is for you. The authors of Arduino and Kinect Projects will show you how to create 10 amazing, creative projects, from simple to complex. You’ll also find out how to incorporate Processing in your project design—a language very similar to the Arduino language.

The ten projects are carefully designed to build on your skills at every step. Starting with the Arduino and Kinect equivalent of “Hello, World,” the authors will take you through a diverse range of projects that showcase the huge range of possibilities that open up when Kinect and Arduino are combined.

• Gesture-based Remote Control. Control devices and home appliances with hand gestures.
• Kinect-networked Puppet. Play with a physical puppet remotely using your whole body.
• Mood Lamps. Build your own set of responsive, gesture controllable LED lamps.
• Drawing Robot. Control a drawing robot using a Kinect-based tangible table.
• Remote-controlled Vehicle. Use your body gestures to control a smart vehicle.
• Biometric Station. Use the Kinect for biometric recognition and checking Body Mass Indexes.
• 3D Modeling Interface. Learn how to use the Arduino LilyPad to build a wearable 3D modelling interface.
• 360º Scanner. Build a turntable scanner and scan any object 360º using only one Kinect.
• Delta Robot. Build and control your own fast and accurate parallel robot. Download Now »

Book Description

HTML5 Games Most Wanted gathers the top HTML5 games developers and reveals the passion they all share for creating and coding great games. You’ll learn programming tips, tricks, and optimization techniques alongside real-world code examples that you can use in your own projects. You won’t just make games—you’ll make great games.

The book is packed full of JavaScript, HTML5, WebGL, and CSS3 code, showing you how these fantastic games were built and passing on the skills you’ll need to create your own great games. Whether you’re a coding expert looking for secrets to push your games further, or a beginner looking for inspiration and a solid game to build on and experiment with, HTML5 Games Most Wanted is for you. Topics and games covered include building complexity from simplicity in A to B, how to create, save, and load game levels in Marble Run, creating fast 3D action games like Cycleblob, entity interpolation from Snowball Fight, trait-based gaming in Grave Danger, the advanced use of WebGL from the game Bar Fight, tips on combining the entangled web of HTML5 technologies brilliantly shown in Far7, the holy grail of making a unique game like Z-Type, and how to build split-screen games as in the addictive Robots Are People Too.

What you’ll learn

• How to create fantastic games using HTML5
• How to add 3D to your games with WebGL
• How to create multiplayer games Download Now »

Book Description

The Unreal UDK features Epic’s award-winning Unreal Engine 3, used to create bestselling games such as Infinity Blade for iOS, and popular console games like Borderlands and Bioshock. Now, you can build your own Unreal game for the iOS platform.

Beginning iOS 3D Unreal Games Development covers using the Unreal UDK game creation system to create 3D games for the iOS platform, which includes the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Specifically, this book covers:

• UnrealScript programming language, going beyond the limitations of the visual Kismet scripting language
• The Unreal UDK code framework, basic UDK tools and other UDK items needed to build a game
• Various author-created game frameworks are presented and are used to illustrate the UnrealScript programming language and user input methods specific to the iOS mobile platform

What you’ll learn

• What the UnrealScript programming language is and does
• The basic Unreal UDK base code framework
• What the basic Unreal tools used to make a game
• What the key parts of the Unreal engine such as the physics engine
• How to do the fundamentals of 3D games programming, including basic 3D math Download Now »

Book Description

OpenSceneGraph is an open source 3D graphics application programming interface, used by application developers in fields such as visual simulation, computer games, virtual reality, scientific visualization, and modeling. Familiar with its concepts and APIs, and need to improve your knowledge? This book is here to help. With exactly 100 recipes, it will enrich your experience and take you to the next level.

OpenSceneGraph 3 Cookbook will escort you into the world of real-time 3D development with OpenSceneGraph, the world famous 3D graphics engine. The book assumes that you are already familiar with some basic concepts, and provides 100 vivid recipes to demonstrate how to utilize the API flexibly and how to implement some practical aspects.

The book is divided into 10 chapters, each of which focuses on one topic. Readers may start from any topic they are interested in.

The book includes customizing OpenSceneGraph, designing scene graph, geometry, scene navigation, animations, effects using fixed pipeline and shaders, managing mass data, and miscellaneous discussions. Every recipe will prove to be useful in a practical way or in research.

OpenSceneGraph 3 Cookbook gives you a wide insight about 3D programming using OpenSceneGraph, with a set of meaningful and interesting examples. Download Now »

Book Description

gnuplot is the world’s finest technical plotting software, used by scientists, engineers, and others for many years. It is in constant development and runs on practically every operating system, and can produce output in almost any format. The quality of its 3d plots is unmatched and its ability to be incorporated into computer programs and document preparation systems is excellent.

gnuplot Cookbook – it will help you master gnuplot. Start using gnuplot immediately to solve your problems in data analysis and presentation. Quickly find a visual example of the graph you want to make and see a complete, working script for producing it. Learn how to use the new features in gnuplot 4.4. Find clearly explained, working examples of using gnuplot with LaTeX and with your own computer programming language.

You will master all the ins and outs of gnuplot through gnuplot Cookbook.

You will learn to plot basic 2d to complex 3d plots, annotate from simple labels to equations, integrate from simple scripts to full documents and computer progams. You will be taught to annotate graphs with equations and symbols that match the style of the rest of your text, thus creating a seamless, professional document. You will be guided to create a web page with an interactive graph, and add graphical output to your simulation or numerical analysis program.

Start using all of gnuplot’s simple to complex features to suit your needs, without studying its 200 page manual through this Cookbook. Download Now »

Book Description

Think of an iAd as a micro-app contained within an app on a user’s iPhone or iPad that they’ve downloaded from the App Store. When the user taps your advert’s banner it bursts into life filling the entire screen of their device.

iAd Beginner’s Guide takes you through the start to finish process of building rich, compelling, interactive iAds. You will learn to create beautiful multi-page ads with store finders, social sharing, 3D images and video galleries.

You will create ads that utilize the powerful technologies in the iPhone to make your brand shine. Once you have engaged the user you can carry out targeted advertising campaigns with location-based coupons, store finders and social engagement. Using the iTunes Store you will see how it’s even possible to add one-click digital content purchasing right within your ad. Learn how iAd producer manages all the HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3 behind your iAd. You will be creating emotive, gripping and effective mobile advertising campaigns in no time.

What you will learn from this book

• Create full-screen HTML5 banners for the iPad.
• Prepare and optimize your content and media for mobile delivery, so your ads work efficiently and load faster on low-power devices.
• Create ads using Apple’s templates, which give you pre-built functionality in your ad Download Now »