Monthly Archives: June 2018

Seven Things for June 27, 2018

First two are the real reason for the post, the third is something I read today, the rest are bits from my twitter feed, in case you don’t hang on my every word there.

  • Jendrik Illner summarizes graphics blog articles in his Graphics Programming weekly. Think of it as your one-stop blog for computer graphics. I wasn’t sure if he’d stick with it, seems like a lot of work to me, but he’s nearing a year’s worth of issues.
  • The free, weekly Level Up Report by Mark DeLoura provides pointers to all sorts of developments and resources for learning through games, coding, and making. Subscribe!
  • Predatory Open Access journals – recent summary from The Economist, with some sad tales. Wikipedia notes some other sting operations, and also gives some counter-criticism.
  • Open source’s use in commercial products is on the rise, with a surprising average of 57% of the code in a proprietary application’s codebase being open.
  • Jamie Wong created a pleasant, profusely illustrated introduction to color science for computer graphics display.
  • I truly start with NVIDIA in August. With my time off, I’ve been occasionally finding time to have fun, with little projects in three.js such as this editable illusion and this local demoparty entry, and my chex_latex script now works on plain text files (yes, after too much time on The Book, I find copy editing fun, or at least a compulsion). Nothing astounding, keep your expectations low.
  • I don’t understand why people keep saying there has never been a mainstream game using a ray tracer. Here’s one from 1997 by Taito on the PlayStation:

One day left for the (optional) “Ray Tracings Gems” promotion

One more day for (optionally) submitting a proposal for Ray Tracing Gems for a shot at also winning a Titan V GPU. You can find the details and an update on what (the heck) a proposal is and what we’re looking for is on this page. A proposal is optional, the article is the main thing, but we hope this promotion gets you thinking about it. We’re happy to hear from you after tomorrow, of course, so please feel free to bounce ideas off of us.

Being the last one in the world to contribute to this meme, maybe our cat Ezra will inspire you:

 

One week to go… Submit!

The Ray Tracing Gems early proposals deadline is June 21, a week away (the final deadline is October 15th). Submit a one-page proposal by June 21 and there’s the extra incentive offered by NVIDIA, a Titan V graphics card to the top five proposals (which I finally looked up – if you don’t want it, trade it in for a nice used car). Anyway, call for proposals for the book is here.

While some initial impetus for making such a book is the new DXR/VKRT APIs, we want the book to be broader than just this area, e.g.,  ray tracing methods using various hardware platforms and software, summaries of the state of the art, best practices, etc. In the spirit of Graphics Gems, GPU Gems, and the Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques, I see our book as a way to inform readers about implementation details and other elements that normally don’t make it into papers. For example, if you have a technique that was not long enough, or too technically involved, to publish in a journal article, now is your chance. Mathematics journals publish short results all the time – computer graphics journals, not so much.

I would also like to see summaries for various facets of the field of ray tracing. For example, I think of Larry Gritz’s article “The Importance of Being Linear” from GPU Gems 3 as a great example of this type of article. It is about gamma correction – not a new topic by any stretch – but its wonderful and thoughtful exposition reached many readers and did a great service for our field. I still point it out to this day, especially since it is open access (a goal for Ray Tracing Gems, too).

You can submit more than one proposal – the more the better, and short proposals are fine (encouraged, in fact). That said, no “Efficient Radiosity for Daylight Simulation in Closed Environments” papers, please; that’s been done (if that paper doesn’t ring a bell, you owe it to yourself to read the classic WARNING: Beware of VIDEA! page). In return, we promise fair reviewing and not to roll the die.

Update: a proposal is just a one-page or less summary of some idea for a paper, and can be written in any format you like: Word, PDF, plain text, etc. Proposals are not required, either by June 21 or after. They’re useful to us, though, as a way to see what’s coming, let each prospective contributor know if it’s a good topic, and possibly connect like-minded writers together. Also, a proposal that “wins” on June 21 does not mean the paper itself will automatically be accepted – each article submitted will be judged on its merits. The main thing is the paper itself, due October 15th. Send proposals to raytracinggems@nvidia.com – we look forward to what you all contribute!

Monument to the Anonymous Peer Reviewer,

Monument to the Anonymous Peer Reviewer

Propose a great RT article and win a Titan V graphics card

I’m passing on this tweet from Tomas:

Titan V competition w/ Ray Tracing Gems.

Submit a one-page abstract to raytracinggems@nvidia.com
The five best article proposals will receive a Titan V graphics card. Submit before the end of June 21st.
More info: https://nvda.ws/2spqrUK

I also wanted to note that the Ray Tracing Gems CFP has been updated with some significant new bits of information:

The book will be published by Apress, which is a subsidiary of Springer Nature and the e-book will be available in PDF, EPUB, and Mobi (Kindle). We are working on getting open access for the e-book, which means that it will be free for all, and that authors may post a draft version to other sites; however, we ask that they include a link to the final version once published. The printed book will cost approximately $60.