Recommended books for Direct3D programming

Question

What good books are there for learning 3D graphics programming (DirectX 9) ?
I'm also interested in a book about pixel/vertex shaders.
I've done some 3D graphics about two years ago using WPF, but I don't think this would help much. I'm pretty good at C++ and optimization (assembler, SSE, metaprogramming), so I don't think this would be a problem.

Maybe it's good to say that I want to implement a 2D graphics library that is accelerated by the GPU (something like Direct2D or WPF, but compatible with Windows XP - and much faster than WPF).

And another question: would it be better to learn DirectX 10, or stick with 9 ? If I use DirectX 10, can the program run on graphic cards that support only version 9 ?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I have Introduction to 3D Game Programming with DirectX 9c: A Shader Approach by Frank Luna. It's a good read. It's in terms of games (which I think is a good thing). It also has shader content (as the title implies), which is pretty much something you need to know with graphics programming.

He also has a book for DX10, so either way you decide to go you should be covered. As far as which to learn, that's up to you. You mentioned targeting XP in your question. If that's definitely what you're shooting for, then I'd stick with DX9.

If you use any DX10 specific features and you run Vista then, no, you can not take advantage of them with a DX9 card. However, with Win7, you can run DX10 stuff with a DX9 card. See this article.