9/23/09

Latest Call of Duty* Release Breaks New Ground and Uses Cores Wisely

Go behind the scenes to discover the development techniques that enhance multi-player gaming and graphic realism.

9/23/09

Streams into Threads - the Making of Ghostbusters*: the Video Game

The Ghostbusters* phenomenon has been going strong for 25 years (yes, the movie came out in 1984). In the latest tribute, read how the technology pros at Terminal Reality brought the game to life, working with Intel to get Ghostbusters*: The Video Game running optimally on a wide range of PC platforms. Who ya gonna call?

9/23/09

Empire: Total War* Takes to the Waves

The cool factor of massive, real-time 3D naval battles is alive and kicking in SEGA’s fifth game of the popular franchise. Read how SEGA’s development team coupled innovative techniques with Intel® software tools to model the complexities of wind, weather, and sea.

7/21/09

World in Conflict*: Bringing Back Superpower Rivalry

Massive Entertainment creates a stunning video game that plays to historic cold war fears, and offers complete camera control, advanced lighting and physics, realistic graphics, and full support for multiple cores and threads.

6/30/09

Successful Games Support Mainstream Graphics

Integrated graphics are here to stay. They’re inexpensive, they’re more capable than ever before, the majority of PCs use them, and many of those PCs are used to play high-end video games. Read how NetDevil and Multiverse Network positioned their businesses to take advantage of this increasing abundance of integrated graphics-based PCs.

6/08/09

It's Back & Badder Than Ever: Bionic Commando*

The wait is over… Bionic Commando*, Agent Nathan Spencer, is back in this completely updated and tricked out 3D immersive experience. Read how the video game was relentlessly tuned and optimized to take advantage of serious multi-core muscle.

6/08/09

Alex Garfield: The Man Behind the Evil Geniuses

Alex Garfield is the executive director of Team Evil Geniuses. This article is a quick glimpse into the life of a hardcore, professional gamer, a young man who travels worldwide to participate at the highest level of international gaming leagues.

5/26/09

Looks Aren't Everything: Making Games Act Real

To be sure, visually rich, accurately rendered environments and characters make video games great-looking. But when you interact with them, do these stunning objects “behave” like the real thing? Roger Chandler, Director of Marketing for Intel’s Visual Computing Software Division, discusses the importance of simulating realism in games.

5/26/09

Catch Video Game and CG Luminaries from GDC 2009

Technology guru extraordinaire, Dave Graveline, taped "Into Tomorrow" from the Intel Lounge at GDC, covering the full spectrum of game ISVs and computer graphics luminaries including Ubisoft, id Software, Autodesk, and Terminal Reality. Get the videos, pictures, and audio archives.

4/21/09

An Interview with Havok's Jeff Yates

Havok tools are included in over 200 video games, and more middleware and plug-ins are on the way. Havok VP, Jeff Yates, talks about the trends and challenges in developing digital content creation tools.

4/21/09

Crysis*: Transcending the Game

Crytek strategy 101: Build it, build it to mod, and build it to perform, and they will come in hoards. And they did. Read how this multi-core-optimized video game has built an active modding community.

4/21/09

The Rise of Ad-Hoc Gaming: Ascaron Sacred* 2 Meets Notebooks

Designed with mobility in mind, Sacred 2 takes advantage of notebook features to provide greater accessibility and more options for game play. Read how this approach gives you the power to control your game experience.

3/18/09

Debugging & Tuning Multi-Threaded Games

With next-generation gaming PC moving to multi-core systems, the software industry is making a paradigm shift to parallel programming. In this case study presented at GDC 2007, see how important parallel dynamics are for today’s multi-threaded games.

(1.1 MB | PDF)

10/13/09

Updated Tools Spice Up New Ghostbusters* Game

When it comes to chasing down vapors, slimers, and poltergeists, stuttering gameplay is not an option. Yet it happened in the creation of Ghostbusters: the Video Game in a scene that is foundational to fans of the movie and the game: the library. Read how Terminal Reality CTO, Mark Randel and Intel engineers broke the bottleneck using Intel® GPA.

10/13/09

Multi-Threaded Fluid Simulation for Games

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) finds numerical solutions to equations describing the behavior of fluids. But until recently, it’s been too computationally intense for real-time applications. This article discusses the Kaboom project, where Intel created a threaded CFD simulation that can be dropped into your project and used to generate real-time fluid simulations.

10/13/09

Implementation of Fast Fourier Transform for Image Processing in DirectX 10

Discrete fourier transform (DFT) is a specific form of Fourier analysis to convert one function (often in the time or spatial domains) into another (frequency domain). This paper discusses using the fast fourier transform (FFT) as a more efficient implementation of DFT, specifically for digital image processing.

9/23/09

Rasterization on Larrabee: Adaptive rasterization helps boost efficiency

For Mike Abrash, Rad Game Tools programmer and graphics-programming expert, it was simply common sense: You don’t rasterize in software if you’re trying to do GPU-class graphics, even on a high-performance part such as Larrabee. Turns out, he was wrong. Read how in this second Dr. Dobb’s series on Larrabee New Instructions.

9/23/09

Ray Tracing Enters the Spotlight as Parallelism Unlocks Real-Time Capabilities

In times like these — when a mere 2-year-old digital camera is summarily dismissed as a museum relic — it’s unthinkable that a 30-year-old image-rendering technique could (1) be resurrected and (2) become a preferred method for producing 3D computer graphics. But thanks to today’s processing power, everything old is new again.

9/23/09

Unlocking the Potential of Graphics Processing: Technology Transfer at Its Finest

How do visual computing innovations take flight and become real? What does it take to capture the imaginations of students and researchers, spurring them to explore the capabilities of computer graphics architectures? Intel CG specialist, Randi Rost, discusses how Intel is doing its part to keep the momentum going.

9/23/09

Approximating Dynamic Global Illumination in Image Space

Providing realistic illumination at high frame rates is commonly achieved through approximations known as screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO). This paper discusses a related method called screen space directional occlusion (SSDO), which handles light angles better, includes at least one bounce of indirect light, works with global illumination, and requires only slightly more computational overhead.

9/23/09

Two Brains are Better Than One

Artificial intelligence (AI) drives gameplay—whether you’re talking about a complex system of AI or a simple scripting engine. To really maximize your AI’s potential, it needs to use the entire CPU and this means threading. This article examines how to thread a simple AI and some of the challenges in writing an AI that truly scales with multi-core CPUs.

9/08/09

Game Physics Performance on the Larrabee Architecture

Up to now, meeting the demands of compute-intensive game physics applications has required an architecture that can deliver high floating point performance and memory bandwidth. But next-gen multi-core architectures – like Larrabee - are overcoming this constraint. Find out how it works.

9/08/09

Microsoft Flight Simulator* X SOARS to New Heights with Multi-Threading

For many gamers and flying buffs, the closest way to capture the sensations of flying without leaving the ground has been Microsoft Flight Simulator*. Now into its second decade and tenth version, Microsoft Flight Simulator X successfully takes advantage of multi-threading and Intel® Core™ microarchitecture.

7/21/09

Consolidation of a Performance Sensitive Application

The Question: Can we virtualize every server application? The Answer: Probably. In this case study, Electronic Sports League preserved game QoS on virtualized game servers when using the latest technologies including Intel® Xeon® processor-based servers. Game servers previously believed to be “non-virtualizeable” actually achieved 18:1 consolidation ratios and saved almost 90% on power consumption.

7/21/09

RTfact: Generic Concepts for Flexible and High Performance Ray Tracing

This paper introduces RTfact--an attempt to bring the different aspects of ray tracing together without sacrificing the performance benefits of hand-tuned single-purpose implementations. RTfact is a template library consisting of packet-centric components combined into an efficient ray-tracing framework.

7/21/09

Optimizing Game Architectures with Intel Threading Building Blocks

Games are some of the most performance-demanding applications around. Discover how the Intel® Threading Building Blocks (Intel® TBB) library helps increase performance gains by optimizing for multi-threaded execution.

7/21/09

Ocean Fog Using Direct3D* 10

Rendering realistic scenes is a perpetual challenge, made even more complex when trying to achieve reasonable frame rates on both low- and high-cost graphics solutions. Using an ocean with fog effects, this white paper investigates how to effectively render the scene on differing graphics solutions using Direct3D* 10.

7/21/09

A First Look at the Larrabee New Instructions (LRBni)

Five years ago, Michael Abrash took a chance. A programmer for Rad Game Tools*, he needed a lerp instruction (yes, lerp) and decided to ask Intel to make one. That request forged a lasting collaboration between Rad Game Tools, Intel, and its GPU-class architecture, code-named Larrabee. With its many cores, many threads, and a new vector instruction set, Abrash explains what Larrabee is, why it’s necessary, and how it can give your graphics wings.

7/21/09

Peek into the Intel Architecture Code-Named Larrabee with Tom Forsyth

In this Q&A-style article, Intel’s Tom Forsyth, software and hardware architect for Larrabee, discusses the new Intel architecture, including his thoughts on where it will take the software rasterization pipeline.

6/9/09

Multi-Core Simulation of Soft-Body Characters Using Cloth

Move beyond the bones-and-skin technique and add soft-body characters to your video games using cloth simulation. This paper shows you how, plus gives an overview of Intel® Threading Building Blocks, a cross-platform open-source software library optimized to divide up computation between threads.

6/9/09

Designing the Framework of a Parallel Game Engine

With the ubiquity of multi-core processors, the need to create a parallel game engine has become increasingly important. Whether you develop for CPU or GPU, this white paper covers the basics of how to create and optimize a multi-core game engine to give your customers better effects on the screen.

5/26/09

A Library Based Approach to Threading for Performance

Since the majority of worldwide computer platforms support Intel® multi-core technology, this paper provides insights into using – and developing - threaded software libraries to prepare your 3D digital software and video games for multi-core, shorten development time, and improve user satisfaction.

5/26/09

Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator Developer's Guide

Intel’s new software development tool, Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator, can maximize your 3D graphics performance on systems with integrated graphics. Get in-depth instructions to ensure your customers have a great experience playing your video games.

5/26/09

Real-Time Parametric Shallow Wave Simulation

The simulation of realistic ocean waves is a significant challenge, primarily because they take ginormous amounts of computing power. This white paper walks through a method for simulating realistic waves in real time – and low computational cost - using Microsoft DirectX* 10 on multi-core processors.

5/26/09

Performance Scaling with Cores: Introducing the SMOKE Framework and Demo

Does Fire Fascinate You? Get an introduction to Intel Smoke, demonstrating how a framework can be successfully threaded to be playable on gaming PCs with either dual-core or multi-core processors. Learn how to use much more of the available processing horsepower, plus download the FREE source code.

4/21/09

Light It Up! Quake Wars* Gets Ray Traced

Ray tracing for physics and graphics is enjoying a renaissance in the video game industry. Read how Intel's ray-tracing team was employed to increase...

4/21/09

Planting Seeds for the Next Gaming Breakthrough: Simulating Real-World Physics

Havok plans to mobilize up-and-coming game developers by giving away Havok* Complete software for free. David O'Meara, the managing director of Havok, sat down for a quick Q&A about it's future and talked about spreading the software tool to universities.

4/21/09

An Overview of How to Accurately Model Procedurally Spreading Fire

This article introduces you to creating a realistic, 3D, spreading fire as well the water to put it out on multi-core, multi-threaded systems. It's a companion piece to the Intel SMOKE demo and free-use source code.

4/21/09

How to Start a Multi-threading Relationship

Building an efficient multi-threading model involves developing trust and establishing good communication habits. Sound familiar? Author Tommy Refenes compares effective software programming to building a solid relationship.

4/21/09

A Landmark In Image Processing: DMIP

Discover how deferred mode image processing, a new addition to the Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives Library, speeds up complex image-processing tasks with up to 3X performance increases.

4/21/09

Multi-Threading Goo! A Programmer's Diary

Software developer, Tommy Refenes, wanted his video game to run at 100 FPS, because he felt the need for speed. But after multiple game engine iterations and threading models, he tossed it all and started over. Ah, the life of a programmer…

4/21/09

Shaping the future of visual computing: Illuminating Intel's vision with pure visual adrenaline

With a nod to the past and a clear focus on the future, Intel is setting out to define a practical yet visionary path for visual computing.

3/18/09

Larrabee: A Many-Core x86 Architecture for Visual Computing

Get a comprehensive understanding of Intel’s next-generation architecture for computer graphics, code-named Larrabee. Includes the new software-rendering pipeline, a multi-core programming model, performance analysis, schematics, processing overviews, and simulation studies.

(2.1 MB | PDF)

3/18/09

Best Practices for Developing and Optimizing Threaded Applications

This technical white paper presents a methodology that has been used to successfully thread many software applications and discusses the software tools that can assist you in developing multi-threaded applications.

(566 KB | PDF)

3/18/09

Procedural Terrain Generation With Fractional Brownian Motion

The computer graphics industry has a long history of attempting to model real-world terrain. In this article, several techniques for generating terrain patches are demonstrated, as well as texture blending and Shader Model 3.0 to create a synthetic scene on integrated graphics solutions.

(283 KB | PDF)

3/18/09

Threading the OGRE3D Render System

OGRE3D (a.k.a. Ogre) is one of the most popular open source 3D engines available. But as great as Ogre is, the one drawback is that it does not take advantage of multi-core systems… unless you thread it. This paper presents three different alternatives to threading the Ogre render system.

(303 KB | PDF)

3/18/09

Real-Time Deep Ocean Simulation on Multi-Threaded Architectures

When designing immersive visual experiences, graphicists want environments that look and feel like the real world. This article offers a real-time demonstration of creating compelling, deep ocean waves. To improve performance, a multi-threaded workload is used on a multi-core machine.

(266 KB | PDF)

10/13/09

Crowdsourced Creativity: Mass Animation Clicks

What would happen if an electric guitar and a violin met, then fell bridge over tuners for each other? A love story, of course. But for Yair Landau, founder of Mass Animation, it’s the storyline for an animated short called Live Music. It’s also one of the most ambitious collaborative projects in the history of animated film.

9/23/09

Composing Audio for Video Games | Art-Enabled by Science and Cakewalk Software

Rob King, music composer for such titles as Never Winter Nights* 2, James Bond Quantum of Solace*, and Silent Hill*: Homecoming, describes Cakewalk’s new SONAR* 8, and talks about how the software takes advantage of the raw power in Intel® Core™ i7 processors.

9/23/09

Opening an Architecture to Creative Development: Autodesk Softimage Goes Custom

Applications devoted to 3D animation have a tough crowd to please. They must be scalable, tweakable, and efficient. Read how Softimage XSI* 7 meets these requirements with a highly customizable framework that lets developers quickly produce the tools artists need, without the slowdowns associated with conventional scripting or code writing.

9/23/09

An Interview with Intel's Mike Burrows

Mike Burrows knows graphics. Long-time Microsoft veteran and founder of its graphics advisory board, Mike is now Intel’s Senior Graphics Software Architect Manager. (Lucky for us.) In this Q&A article written with Gamasutra, Mike gives his views on where the CG industry is going and how upcoming technologies like Larrabee can help take developers into the future.

7/21/09

Intel Audio Alliance

Can integrated audio deliver the features and high-end performance of an add-in audio card? Oh yea. Today, top audio professionals are relying on Intel products to create today's popular music. Read how six top audio professionals are using Intel® architecture-optimized products to create their art.

7/21/09

Rapid-Fire Moviemaking: Processing Power Streamlines the Workflow

At 24 frames per second, modern moviemaking must process 300 megabytes per second (that's one terabyte per hour). With such a staggering data stream, how can digital moviemaking compete with 35mm? CineForm* has found a way, using multi-core processor advances to streamline digital cinema and S3D development.

7/21/09

José María Andrés: Genetic Genius

Some people are just born with it… Read about Spanish CG artist, José María Andrés: his motivation, 3D animation techniques, quirky characters, and preferred graphics development platforms and software tools. Top of the list? Autodesk 3ds Max* and Adobe Photoshop plug-in Filter Forge* running on an Intel® multi-core PC.

6/09/09

Damien Thaller: Passion and Talent Bring Stories to Life

Getting paid to dream up and create crazy cool stuff ... it's nice work if you can get it. And Damian Thaller has. Read how this unassuming former illustrator turned an "ah-ha" moment into a new CG career that includes 3D animation and visually rich movie-making.

6/09/09

IGOR: The Making of a Monster Hit

IGOR the game was developed while the movie was in production. The challenge: create a mass-market video game that would run great on new gaming PCs as well as on PCs that were 5-years old. Read how they did it.

5/26/09

Enabling 3D Moviemaking: Autodesk® Retools Maya

Enabling moviemaking in S3D requires rethinking many cinematic conventions, and then building tools and processes that help storytellers exercise their craft. With Maya 2009, Autodesk has done just that.

5/26/09

DreamWorks Animation and Intel: Forging an Alliance to Advance S3D Entertainment

Creating immersive stereoscopic 3D takes ginormous amounts of digital images and processing power. Read how DreamWorks and Intel partnered to create a 21st Century method for S3D production.

4/21/09

Epic's Unreal Engine* Stops Playing Around: Non-Game Uses Open New Opportunities

The Unreal 3 engine has been widely hailed for its role in producing top-selling video games. Lately, TV show animators, NFL stadium architects, and web series producers have also used the game engine.

4/21/09

Home-Grown Production Pipeline Rivals Proprietary Platform

Read how Gareth Edwards chucked the old "video production" paradigm and created his own video effects solution on Intel® platform innovations. The result? A nod from the BBC to create its epic, "Attila the Hun."

3/18/09

CineForm's Moviemaking Revolution

From Sundance to Bollywood, a new generation of popular filmmaking is challenging the old guard of big-budget movies. Using the power of multi-core processors, creating high-quality digital media in real time is not only a new reality, it’s slashing timelines and lowering budgets.

(440 KB | PDF)

3/18/09

Smart Planning Pays Off: MainConcept Capitalizes on a Technology Investment as New Hardware Platforms Emerge

For video encoding, the need for speed is top priority. Translated, video applications eat processor power for breakfast. In this case study of MainConcept, read how it cranked up the dials on the performance machine to deliver screamingly fast video technology products.

(857 KB | PDF)

3/18/09

Creating Impressive 3D Productions at High Speed: Intel Technology Expedites 3D Animation and Modeling

Tools, workflow, stability, and performance are requirements for 3D graphics applications. But the most serious challenge? Speed. That is, creating the best images on the tightest deadlines. Read how Maxon’s animation software, CINEMA 4D, gives deadlines a run for their money.

(301 KB | PDF)

3/18/09

Delivering Real-Time 3D Video Compositing

Read how RadTIME, Inc. used Intel® IPP to combine 2D and 3D elements into one software tool, eliminating many time-consuming video rendering steps, reducing production costs and time-to-market, and possibly even causing a small revolution in the video industry.

(82 KB | PDF)

9/23/09

Launch of Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers: Virtual Graphics Support for Your Game Studio

New Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers help developers maximize for integrated graphics. Read how Terminal Reality, developers of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, used the Intel® GPA frame analyzer and thread analyzer to root out bottlenecks and optimize for multiple platforms. Next, gain insight into Intel GPA from Gas Powered Games, describing its efforts in bringing out the new RTS title Demigod.

7/21/09

Intel GPA: Capturing Mass Market Graphics Performance

Calling all game developers! In 2008, integrated graphics chipsets outsold discrete graphics chipsets nearly 2:1 (with a 3:1 edge expected by 2013). To help you grab your piece of this market-share pie, Intel has developed Intel® Graphics Performance Analyzers, a DirectX-based toolset that helps video game developers evaluate and improve game performance on Intel® integrated graphics. Find out what it is… and how to get it, FREE.

6/30/09

Autodesk® Video

You probably know that Autodesk is a world leader in 3D design software for many industries including digital media. What you may not know is that Autodesk and Intel have collaborated on three powerful tools for digital artists: Autodesk® Maya®, Autodesk® SoftImage®, and Autodesk® 3ds Max®.

6/30/09

An Interview with Havok's Jeff Yates

Havok tools are included in over 200 video games, and more middleware and plug-ins are on the way. Havok VP, Jeff Yates, talks about the trends and challenges in developing digital content creation tools.

6/30/09

Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator Developer's Guide

Intel’s new software development tool, Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator, can maximize your 3D graphics performance on systems with integrated graphics. Get in-depth instructions to ensure your customers have a great experience playing your video games.

5/26/09

Performance Scaling with Cores: Introducing the SMOKE Framework and Demo

Does Fire Fascinate You? Get an introduction to Intel Smoke, demonstrating how a framework can be successfully threaded to be playable on gaming PCs with either dual-core or multi-core processors. Learn how to use much more of the available processing horsepower, plus download the FREE source code.

4/21/09

Planting Seeds for the Next Gaming Breakthrough: Simulating Real-World Physics

Havok plans to mobilize up-and-coming game developers by giving away Havok* Complete software for free. David O'Meara, the managing director of Havok, sat down for a quick Q&A about it's future and talked about spreading the software tool to universities.

4/21/09

An Overview of How to Accurately Model Procedurally Spreading Fire

This article introduces you to creating a realistic, 3D, spreading fire as well the water to put it out on multi-core, multi-threaded systems. It's a companion piece to the Intel SMOKE demo and free-use source code.

4/21/09

A Landmark In Image Processing: DMIP

Discover how deferred mode image processing, a new addition to the Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives Library, speeds up complex image-processing tasks with up to 3X performance increases.

4/21/09

Epic's Unreal Engine* Stops Playing Around: Non-Game Uses Open New Opportunities

The Unreal 3 engine has been widely hailed for its role in producing top-selling video games. Lately, TV show animators, NFL stadium architects, and web series producers have also used the game engine.

3/18/09

Delivering Real-Time 3D Video Compositing

Read how RadTIME, Inc. used Intel® IPP to combine 2D and 3D elements into one software tool, eliminating many time-consuming video rendering steps, reducing production costs and time-to-market, and possibly even causing a small revolution in the video industry.

(82 KB | PDF)