Technical Library

Writing a Simulator only works if you have a good collection of books. Here are some of the titles I used and my opinion on them. Not all can be really recommended, but some are really indispensable.
Please email me if you have further resources to recommend.

Gliding

• Hesse, Der Segelflugzeugführer, Hitzenroth
  This is known as the bible of the gliding instructor in Germany. If your way of grasping aerodynamics is not the formula derived one, this is a extremly helpful one.
• Frank Irving, The Paths of Soaring Flight, Imperial Collge Press
  Small but good book about theoretical aspects of gliding. From the table of contents: Wings, Drag, Equations of Motion, Instruments, Sailplane in the Athmosphere, Flying in Thermos, McCready, Cross-Country-Flying, Optimisations, Wind effects, CG effects. It makes a good complement for the Hesse.
• Davig Bourg, Physics for Game Developers, O'Reilly
  This is another of those excellent must have's. Here a fluently readable and entertaining description on simulation technology and math background is provided. You just start reading on the weekend and read it in one go. There is code sections so you get all needed information that the message ist clear without trying things out on the computer first. Dynamic motion simulation is describes in various sections (even a simple but effective 3D Flight loop is derived), so that there are examples for many simulation aspects.

Graphics

• OpenGL Reference Manual and OpenGL Programming Guide, Addison-Wesley
  A reference you should have on the shelf. I am using rather frequently. Be sure to get the Programming Manual in the new Version 1.4, which is quite improved in some details.
• Möller, Haines, Real-Time Rendering, Peters
  This is really a very reourceful book, I've seen the new edition which is even more recommendable to anyone doing this deliberately-reinventing-the-wheel kind of development.
• Wright, Sweet, OpenGL Superbible, Waite Groupe
  Used it as primer on open GL and found it for a start much more useful than the official Programming guide. I think this is the best started I have seen so far. The latest edition even has some flight sim demo as part of the examples used.
• Frank Eckgold, Virtual Reality, vieweg
  Rather disappointing. Gives some nice mathematical formulas, e.g. Z-Buffer Algorithm. When things get interesting, the texts advances to the next chapter. It appears outdated today.
• Watt, Advanced Animation and Rendering Techniques - Theory and Practice
  Covers basic understandin stuff of image generation processes. Its a good add on to the Foley, van Dam classic volume on computer graphics.
• Luebke, Reddy, et al, Level of Detail for 3D Graphics, Morgan Kaufmann
  This is a must have. If you are doing terrain, spent hours searching the web for demos and articles and are tiered of putting it all together, you can have it here in a page turner like fashion. The authors desribe the heart of the algorithms, data structures and basic understanding of the techniques for LOD, that this gives you an instant overview over the evolving approaches up to the state of the art. Excellent book!
• Mark DeLoura, Game Programming Gems2, Charles River Media
  A really good collection of various topics about encountered programming challenges and innovative solutions. Rather expensive to just put on the shelf, but when you are doing architecture work, it is a good idea to browse the various chapters for ideas.

Architecture

• LaMothe, Tricks of the Windows Game programming gurus, Sams
  A good primer on the variety of game programming issues. If you never programmed a game, this is the book for you to unravel the inner doings of such.
• Rollings, Morris, Game Architecture and Design, Coriolis
  This is an architecture book with class diagrams in UML that impressed me a lot, when I browsed throught in the book shop. However, for a flight simulator, much of this stuff is not that much helpful. Anyway I read through it and think is is a good warm-up into the topics and gives you valuable background.
• Dobravka et al., Computerspiele - Design und Programmierung, mitp
  This contains very littke coding examples, but a very good-to-read approach to grame programming. It convers from story board to program management. What in the end make me by the book was the section on programming. This did not show a lot of examples, but described techniques as optimization and typical traps and bugs, that you instantly recognise from practical experience.
• Scherfgen, 3D-Spieöeprogrammierung, Hanser
  This book focusses on DX9, but can easily be used for OpenGL based programming as well. I like the programming style of the code snippets very much for good comments and clarity. It is actually the first 3D Game programmig book, that is really taking on a 3D game which is worth the name. The book talks through the design of a own 3D engine. The examples then show how to apply the more generic functions of an engine in the games. Especially if you have a specific project in mind, it is easy to get pulled into a too game specific architecture which is not very easy to extend and adapt to upcoming new requirements. I also liked the completeness of the book: It also talks about LOD and must-have tools.
  
• Kuhl, Weatherly, Dahmann, Creating Computer Simulation Systems, Prentice Hall PTR
  Only good introduction to High-Level-Architecture (HLA), a US Department of Defence (DoD) introduced communication architecture for distributed Simulation. The book describes a rather academic example of a suhsi restaurant how the HLA idea is applicated in a practical application. Since mainly in military Flight Simulators from 2002 this is a used standard, an example from this domain would have been much more suitable. However, good reading and easy to understand, if you grasped CORBA, COM and the like before.
• Root, Boer, DirectX complete, McGraw Hill
  A book that gives some good overview articles on those aspects of direct X you are interested in if you are an OpenGL guy and want to use the Input and Sound libs. However, those sections are not enough if you want to do a good job, e.g. with a good force feedback simulation.
• Kerninghan, Ritchie, Programming in C, Hanser
  This is the baisc bilble you probably have anyway..

General Information stuff

• Gamasutra Web site
• Opengl.org Web sit
• MSDN Online Help
• Online Articles and demos on subjects like LOD, BSP trees

I am still looking for some books on very specific topics and would be glad for any hints:

• A good book on force feedback devices, that covers a bit more than only advanced machine guns
• A book on simulation systems architectures. The above quoted is a very good start only.