Most of the book has been rewritten and expanded. All of the programs have been rewritten and many have been added so the CD-ROM now contains more than 400 examples.

Perhaps the most important change is in how the book handles color. The first edition assumed you were using 8-bit color which allows you to display 256 colors at one time. Recent versions of Visual Basic have made it harder and harder to take full advantage of this color mode. At the same time, memory and graphic hardware prices have dropped so more and more people are using higher color models.

For these reasons, the second edition assumes you are using a higher color mode. All of the programs that use color assume you are using more than 256 colors.

The 24-bit color model is particularly useful. The way the system stores color information in a 24-bit image makes loading the bitmap data quite fast.

Some other new features:

• Printer preview at multiple scales.
• Full color shape-distorting transformations of images.
• A morphing program that lets you morph one image into another. Click here to see four frames from an morphing animation sequence (it looks better animated).
• Higher order polynomial least squares curve fitting.
• Three-dimensional B-spline editor.
• Color fractal landscapes.
• The Gouraud and Phong smooth shading methods.
• Ray tracing improvements:
  • Faster code.
  • Multiple light sources.
  • A new checkerboard object.
  • Texture mapping.
  • Environment mapping.
  • Image mapping to determine transparency.
  • A script-driven object editor that lets you preview scenes using wireframe or shading models.