I remember having this book. I was probably 14 or 15 years old, and I was just getting into aviation after being given my first flying lesson. I had a copy of MS Flight Simulator, and I had taught myself some C++, but of course the content of the book was a bit beyond my capacity at the time. It's nice to relive the excitement of getting this book with the idea of being able to make my own flight sim. Of course, the sim they make in the book, IIRC, was nigh unplayable!

There was another similar book, that predated C++ / OOP popularity, that made a big fuss on the cover about how it taught quaternions.

Do you happen to recall the title of that book? Or what it was about?

That is actually an earlier version of the book in the OP, they renamed it between editions.

Oh, didn't realize there was a second edition to Flights of fantasy. Looks like they added a shading chapter and more sound code.

Oh! I had the original version ("Flights of Fantasy") and that's where I learned as a teen about matrix multiplication to represent translation and rotation!

No idea sadly, I remember getting it from the university library in probably '91 or '92, and reading through it, but the title evades me, and searching on google and ddg brought no clues.

A contemporary explanation of near and far pointers on page 16. Today I learned.

Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37358063, which was posted a bit earlier!