{"id":103,"date":"2009-06-03T07:49:59","date_gmt":"2009-06-03T13:49:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/?p=103"},"modified":"2009-06-03T08:26:15","modified_gmt":"2009-06-03T14:26:15","slug":"bits-of-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/bits-of-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Bits of News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just some quick bits to chew on for breakfast:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Microsoft announced <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xbox.com\/en-US\/live\/projectnatal\/\">Project Natal<\/a> at E3; the (simulated) video is entertaining. <a href=\"http:\/\/popwatch.ew.com\/popwatch\/2009\/06\/e3-microsoft.html\">Lionhead Studios&#8217; demo<\/a> is also worth a look. Somehow a little creepy, and I suspect in practice there&#8217;s a high likelihood that a user will quickly run off the rails and not do what&#8217;s expected, but still. Considering how limited the Eye Toy is compared to its hype, I&#8217;m not holding my breath, but it&#8217;s interesting to know &amp; think about. <em>(thanks to Adam Felt for the link)<\/em><\/li>\n<li>New book out, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Graphics-Shaders-Practice-Mike-Bailey\/dp\/1568813341?tag=realtimerenderin\"><strong>Graphics Shaders: Theory and Practice<\/strong><\/a>. It&#8217;s about GLSL, you can find the Table of Contents and other front matter at <a href=\"http:\/\/akpeters.com\/product.asp?ProdCode=3349\">the book&#8217;s site<\/a> (look to the right side). I hope to get a copy and give a review at some point.<\/li>\n<li>I mentioned Mark Haigh-Hutchinson&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Real-Time-Cameras-Mark-Haigh-Hutchinson\/dp\/0123116341?tag=realtimerenderin\"><strong>Real-Time Cameras<\/strong><\/a> book in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/odds-and-ends\/\">an earlier post<\/a>. The, honestly, touching story of its history is republished\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/blogs\/MarkDeLoura\/20090515\/1387\/RealTime_Cameras_And_Mark_HaighHutchinson.php\">on Mark DeLoura&#8217;s blog<\/a> at Gamasutra.<\/li>\n<li>Nice <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maximumpc.com\/print\/6338\">history of graphics cards<\/a>, with many pictures.<\/li>\n<li>Humus describes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.humus.name\/index.php?ID=266\">a clever particle rendering optimization technique<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.humus.name\/index.php?page=News&amp;ID=267\">update<\/a>), and provides <a href=\"http:\/\/www.humus.name\/index.php?page=Cool&amp;ID=8\">a utility<\/a>. Basically, make the polygon fit the visible part of the particle to save on fill rate. One of those ideas that I suspect many of us have wondered if it&#8217;s worth doing. It is, and it&#8217;s great to have someone actually test it out and publish the results.<\/li>\n<li>This is an interesting concept: with an NVIDIA card and their new driver you can now\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nzone.com\/object\/nzone_ambientocclusion_home.html\">turn on ambient occlusion<\/a> for 22 games that don&#8217;t actually use this technique in their shipped shaders. In itself, this feature is a minor plus, but brings up all sorts of questions, such as buying into a particular brand to improve quality, who controls and who can modify the artistic look of a game, etc.\u00a0<em>(thanks to Mauricio Vives for the link)<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Old, but if you haven&#8217;t seen it before, it&#8217;s a must: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/w00kie\/sets\/180637\/\">transparent screens<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just some quick bits to chew on for breakfast: Microsoft announced Project Natal at E3; the (simulated) video is entertaining. Lionhead Studios&#8217; demo is also worth a look. Somehow a little creepy, and I suspect in practice there&#8217;s a high likelihood that a user will quickly run off the rails and not do what&#8217;s expected, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[16,187,188,186,189,190],"class_list":["post-103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources","tag-books","tag-glsl","tag-history","tag-natal","tag-particles","tag-transparency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realtimerendering.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}