Most Obvious Keyboard is Not Available?

This and That: Future Graphics in Games

This and That: Video Game Optimization

NVIDIA Texture tool 2.0.8 is released: Do I see anything special? No. I really wish they would re-implement the sharpen filter, which used to be available on Texture Tool 1, soon. It's scheduled to be done in version 2.2. (who knows how long it will take though?) GPU Pro is out. I heard this will replace the long running ShaderX series. The name is little bit snobbish, I think. :) Eric, the author of Real-Time Rendering, recommended this book, Video Game Optimization. I'm not aware of any book which is dedicated to video game optimization. So I'll surely check it out sometime soon Python 2.7 is out. Despite of C#'s growing popularity I believe people still use Python in game industry?

This and That: Dark Art of Shadow Mapping

The Dark Art of Shadow Mapping : Microsoft explains the best practices on Shadow Mapping techniques really well in details. I love MS when they actively share informations like this. John Hable: How To Split Specular And Diffuse In Real Images At E3 2010, we released a new trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. Also we sent down a real Space Marine to E3. vReveal's Free Video Enhancement Software. This looks pretty useful, and supports CUDA. If you have ATI cards like me still can use CPU for that. (vReveal told me multi-core CPU is well supported too) It's good to see more non-gaming software using CUDA, but doesn't really benefit me anymore because I recently switched to ATI. Free versions lack certain features such as HD video output, but you can buy the full version at dirt cheap price of $39, anyways. A cloud gaming service, OnLive , is officially launched now. And Jeff from Wolffire shares his thoughts on this. My personal thoughts on this specific service? I think it has potential if prices Gamefest 2010 presentations are now available online. I've seen them long time ago, so I don't remember what exactly are there. I just have impression that there were some useful stuff on graphics and optimization. So you go check'em out and find your own use. :)

This and That: Use Decals to Crash Your Car

Some recent interesting news and stuff:

Isn't Flash's Next Step So Obvious?

There has been a lot of cockfight between Adobe and Apple recently, and sure.. now we all know it's not about technology but about market dominance. In summary, Apple blames Flash's stability and claims HTML5 is the future.

Thoughts on Cloud Gaming

So it looks like cloud gaming service OnLive is getting more popularity. I thought about this whole cloud gaming stuff while I was in shower this morning and I became to wonder what types of services can be on cloud.

Pre-multiplied Alpha

When batching particles in order to boost the performance, we usually make texture pages, or sprite sheets, (it is a giant texture which contains all textures used for the particles. you can easily use the sub images you want by playing with UV coordiate on vertex data), to minimize the number of draw calls. However, you can go one step further and even batch particles with two different blend modes, alpha and additive blend mode, together and draw'em as one draw call.

Real-Time Normal Map DXT Compression

I had change to read this paper recently, and found it's really helpful, not just for real-time normal map DXT compression, but also for normal map DXT compression both for Tangent and Object space.

Photoshop Blends in sRGB Space, Not in Linear

First for those people who are not familiar with Gamma, sRGB and Linear Spaces, here is a good presentation explaining all of these: Picture Perfect: Gamma through the Rendering Pipeline