We want to thank all of you that attended the 2010 Game Developers Conference. We hope you enjoyed the variety of presentations we had to offer, and we look forward to seeing you next year!

GDC 2010 Sessions

Physically Simulated Clothing by CCP (EVE Online) Using NVIDIA APEX (PDF Slides)

  • Speakers: Vigfus Omarsson (Lead Technical Artist, CCP), Snorri Sturluson (Senior Software Engineer, CCP), Monier Maher (APEX Product Manager, NVIDIA)
  • In this session, we will demonstrate how CCP added physically simulated clothing to their Eve Incarna characters using NVIDIA's APEX Clothing. We will demonstrate, step by step, the full authoring pipeline, from DCC tools to final integration into the game engine. This session introduces the full NVIDIA APEX suite of artist friendly tools and runtime libraries (Clothing, Destruction, Particles, Turbulence & Vegetation), which significantly speed up creation and inclusion of scalable, dynamic content without a large engineering effort.

APEX Clothing 3ds MAX plug-in demo (PDF Slides)

Authoring Physically Simulated Destruction with NVIDIA APEX (PDF Slides)

  • Speaker: Bryan Galdrikian (Senior Application Engineer, NVIDIA), Dane Johnston (Technical Artist, NVIDIA)
  • In this session we will show how an artist can quickly add cinematic scale destruction to their game levels using NVIDIA APEX Destruction. We will demonstrate, step by step, the full authoring pipeline, from DCC tools to final integration into a game engine, including a case study. This session introduces the full NVIDIA APEX suite of artist friendly tools and runtime libraries (Clothing, Destruction, Particles, Turbulence & Vegetation), which greatly speeds up development of scalable, dynamic content without requiring a large engineering effort

Screen Space Fluid Rendering for Games (PDF Slides)

  • Simon Green (NVIDIA)
  • This talk provides describes an easy to implement technique for rendering particle-based fluid simulations in games.

DirectCompute Performance (PDF Slides)

  • Nicolas Thibieroz (AMD) and Cem Cebenoyan (NVIDIA )
  • Direct Compute is a new feature in DirectX 11 for general purpose programming of GPUs. This talk covers the performance characteristics of modern GPUs when using Direct Compute, to ensure that you take full advantage of the capabilities and extract the highest performance possible.

DX11 Effects in Metro 2033 (PDF Slides)

  • Oles Shishkovtsov (4A Games) ,Ashu Rege (NVIDIA), and Nikolai Sakharnykh (NVIDIA)
  • This talk describes one of the first full implementations of DirectX11 in Metro 2033, a post-apocalyptic game developed by 4A Games and based on the cult classic novel by Dmitry Glukhovsky. The talk describes details of the first-ever game implementation of cinematic quality Depth of Field using the Compute Shader in DX11 as well as the use of DX11 Tessellation based on Phong tessellation and displacement mapping.

DX11 Performance Tips & Tricks (PDF Slides)

  • Holger Gruen (AMD) and Cem Cebenoyan (NVIDIA)

Enriching Details using Direct3D 11 tessellation (PDF Slides)

  • Tianyun Ni (NVIDIA)
  • This talk provides a comprehensive overview of Direct3D11 tessellation technology and a comparison between various tessellation schemes. It demonstrates how to leverage Direct3D11 tessellation to take your games to the next level. Concepts are introduced progressively and illustrated with step-by-step walkthroughs, including screenshots and examples of shader code.

Tessellation Performance (PDF Slides)

  • Jon Story (AMD) and Cem Cebenoyan (NVIDIA)
  • Tessellation is one of the most exciting new features in DirectX 11, implemented as a set of completely new pipeline stages with their own performance characteristics. This talk covers optimization advice for taking full advantage of DX11 Tessellation, covering optimization advice for each stage in the pipeline, as well as several techniques for level-of-detail.

Taking Fluid Simulation Out of the Box: Particle Effects in Dark Void (PDF Slides)

  • Speaker: Sarah Tariq (Developer Technology Software Engineer, NVIDIA), Joe Cruz (VFX Lead, Airtight Games)
  • In this session we will talk about 3D fluid simulation driven effects that we created in the game Dark Void. We will go over the details of how to implement a seamless, scalable and direct-able fluid simulation in a game engine and use it to create the next generation of fluid driven effects. We believe that these techniques are feasible for games, not just tech demos and movies, and we hope to inspire the audience into using such techniques to create amazing effects in their own games. Intended Audience Effects programmers and visual effect artists interested in realistic and visually compelling fluid simulation. Some background in fluid simulation techniques would be useful but not required. Takeaway Highly detailed, interactive fluid simulation is not something we can only hope to see in movies or in tech demos; it is a feasible technology which is being used to make fantastic effects in shipping games today. In this session we will go over the details of how to implement a seamless, scalable and direct-able fluid simulation in a game engine and how to use it to create the next generation of fluid driven effects.

NVIDIA's New Game Development Environment: NVIDIA Parallel Nsight™ (PDF Slides)

  • Speaker: Jeffrey Kiel (Manager of Graphics Tools, NVIDIA), Kumar Iyer (Product Manager, NVIDIA), Sebastien Domine (Senior Director of Development Tools, NVIDIA)
  • Come learn about NVIDIA's new development environment for heterogeneous (CPU+GPU) platforms, integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio. This is the world's first GPU hardware source debugger for HLSL shaders, DirectCompute and CUDA C++, and adds powerful DirectX 10 and 11 frame capture and analysis, pixel history, and platform-level performance tools that can show you activities across your GPU, CPU and the operating system. One platform allows you to seamlessly develop CPU and GPU code for the first time. Session attendees will see a live demo of the GPU development environment, and learn how to debug and optimize their GPU code and API usage directly from Visual Studio. Attendees will also learn how to get access to the Beta program for this game-changing development tool.

Tegra - Developing Killer Content for Advanced Mobile Platforms (PDF Slides)

  • Speaker: Lars Bishop (Mobile Developer Technologies Engineer, NVIDIA)
  • Tegra is the world's first dual-core mobile processor and is enabling a new era in mobile content. Tegra is being built into diverse devices from phones, tablets and smartbooks to set-top boxes and TVs, creating a high-volume content opportunity. Come for insights into developing 3D and multimedia mobile applications Android, Linux and Windows CE; see demonstrations of NVIDIA's Tegra developers - kit and tools, including PerfHUD ES; learn cutting-edge techniques for integrating video and 3D into augmented reality titles using cross-platform Khronos APIs. Discover how to tap into Tegra and be a part of the mobile content revolution.

NVIDIA Theater Presentations