Hi everyone, Just wanted to say thanks for providing this excellent resource. I've got a mathematics degree, but I'm not a trained programmer so everything has been self taught. I've been working on an app for work to visualise antenna radiation patterns. Plotting 2D charts was fairly easy, but I was a little stuck when it came to the 3D bit. I've been slaving away the last few days trying to get my head around DirectX and Direct3D but I'm pleased to say that I've finally finished the 3D bit, with rotations and everything :) Without this site it would have taken me a lot longer. Thank you!

I agree, this site is really remarkable. When I explain how I learn programming to friends/family, I have to explain the nature of the site, because there really is no other site like this.

Much appreciated [smile]. Best of luck!

About computer graphics and rotations in particular, it went the opposite way for me. I learned about rotation matrices thanks to this website and others way back when I was beginning high school. Years later when I actually took linear algebra it was as if I already knew it even though there were many small, technical aspects I was not familiar with.

In general, I have no doubt that reading daily (and occasionally participating in) the technical discussions here was really, really good preparation for college coursework. Almost every time something comes up in class that I get and most other people in the class don't I can think back to a discussion here (or on similar sites) about it that I read at some point during high school. I sometimes think of my experience reading this site through high school as my secret weapon.

As you can imagine, I knew the majority of the theory behind projecting a 3D world onto a 2D screen - it's not too difficult for a maths graduate. However, having never studied quaternions in detail, bar one lecture several years ago, I was pleased to discover that they are a very elegant way of performing rotations.

And of course there's the DirectX bit, which is all new to me. The site has been invaluable for getting started with it. The funny thing is that even now that I've got a very basic 3D engine written and working, I still feel like a newbie to DirectX because there's so much more that I don't yet know about!

I think I'm going to keep tinkering at home so that I can keep learning all the techniques. I'd love to get to a stage where I have a reasonable 3D sandbox to play in.