I'm living out my top-choice fantasy already: working on my web startup. Gaming is a secondary love, but if no one else gets around to it I definitely will.

DaVinci tackled a dozen fantasies pretty much simultaneously.

I think you're more capable than you give yourself credit for.

Yeah but a lot of what you think of when you think DaVinci never really got past the idea state.

Hah. Da Vinci was a time traveler though. Unfair advantage.

That's like saying that somebody should be pretty good at physics because Einstein was. Juggling lots of ideas at once was pretty much Leonardo da Vinci's thing.

Discouraging people from having confidence in themselves (even when that confidence is unrealistic) is one of the biggest tragedies brought about by modern-day mediums such as HN et al.

I'd rather strike out a dozen times than watch from the stands.

I love it how you linked to beej's guide, nehe and physx. Except for the PhysX link its like its 1999 all over again!

To avoid getting down voted here are what I would call modern, or at least more comprehensive versions of those links.

http://www.unity3d.com http://www.udk.com http://mycryengine.com

If you really want to role your own engine then...

http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/directx/ http://gafferongames.com/networking-for-game-programmers/ http://www.jenkinssoftware.com/ http://bulletphysics.org

Although a handful of links can't sum up the amount of work, knowledge and tech required to build something resembling a modern 3D game engine.