Direct3D 11 Preview

The graphics track has everything you need to get the most out of your
high-performance graphics engine. Join us as we cover exciting new
ground, including the lowdown on the upcoming Direct3D 11 API set. We
also cover the recent improvements to PIX (for both Xbox 360 and
Windows), giving you tips to help eke out every last cycle of
performance. And finally, we share never-before-seen details on the
inner workings of the Xbox 360 GPU.


Towards Real-Time High-Fidelity Special Effects
Zoran Popovic


This talk explores how the real-time domain of interactive games
requires a completely new approach to algorithms for most problems in
graphics. To do so, we explore three fundamentally different phenomena—
character locomotion, human crowds, and fluids—and the unusual
algorithms that meet the requirements for real-time rendering. The
first part of the talk presents a real-time model of crowd dynamics
based on continuum computations instead of per-agent simulations. The
second part describes real-time character controllers capable of
achieving high-dimensional locomotion tasks. The third part covers a
new model reduction approach to fluid simulation, enabling large, real-
time, detailed flows with continuous user interaction capable of
performing six orders of magnitude faster than current high-fidelity
algorithms.


Xbox Textures Formats, Conversion, Fetching, and Performance
David Cook and Jason Gould


This talk cover details of texture formats—exactly how is the data
laid out in memory, and how does the GPU interpret it? What happens if
you resolve or render a value from one format to another? We also walk
through the texture pipe from beginning to end, and discuss the
details of the texture cache, with emphasis on improving pixel shader
performance.



Shedding (Indirect) Light on Global Illumination for Games
Claude Marais

Many innovative global illumination techniques have been described in
recent years, but using these techniques in actual games seems to be a
non-trivial task. This presentation sheds some light on these
difficulties and discusses possible solutions. We review a few of the
recent global illumination techniques and, in particular, discuss a
detailed implementation of reflective shadow maps, with demos. The
goal of the presentation is to leave the audience with a renewed
optimism and excitement for implementing global illumination
techniques in their games.



Multi-Threaded Rendering for Games
Matt Lee and Brian Klamik

core is just not enough for graphics anymore—rendering tasks often
have to run in parallel to hit the target framerate and hide latent
operations. This talk includes best practices, pitfalls to avoid, and
a range of design patterns for implementing multithreaded rendering on
today’s platforms, including Direct3D 10 and Xbox 360. We cover
everything from batch submission to resource management and discuss
future plans for greater flexibility and higher performance when
rendering on multiple threads.



Direct3D Samples Update
Cameron Egbert

Come see the latest developments from the DirectX and Xbox 360 samples
team. This presentation is a deep-dive into the inner workings of
recent and upcoming graphics samples in the DirectX SDK and Xbox 360
XDK. Techniques discussed include deferred particle rendering, Xbox
360 geometry instancing, edge-based antialiasing, and more.



Next-Gen Content Pipelines: A Study of 1st Party Titles
Kutta Srinivasan

The breadth and quantity of content required for triple-A games has
increased dramatically over the years. As a result, content creation
is often the biggest challenge and cost for a game studio. This talk
presents best practices for developing a content pipeline and builds
on experiences from the trenches of Microsoft’s 1st party studios
including Rare, Ensemble, and Bungie. This talk is aimed at tool and
engine developers who want to enable rapid iteration while ensuring
the robustness of content builds for their artists and designers.



A Detailed of Xbox 360 Direct3D Synchronization and
Multithreading
Juan Carlos Arevalo Baeza

Resource locking, front buffer swapping, queries, fences, predicated
tiling, direct access to GPU state… Direct3D for Xbox 360 includes a
lot of mechanisms that involve, enable, or enhance the communication
between the multiple CPU cores and the GPU. This presentation provides
a brief overview of previously existing primitives, a detailed
overview of recently introduced primitives, as well as an examination
of the various interactions between them. The goal of the presentation
is to provide the audience with a deeper understanding of the inner
workings of Direct3D for Xbox 360 and discuss common scenarios,
enabling them to keep the GPU running at full steam and make efficient
use of the power of multiple CPU cores for graphics rendering.



Performance Tools Update
Karen Stevens

The XNA Professional Game Platform (PGP) development team has been
hard at work delivering updates to PIX for both Xbox and Windows. This
session brings you up to speed on the new features and improvements
made to this critical toolset for performance investigation and
analysis with your game.



Introduction to the Direct3D 11 Graphics Pipeline
Allison Klein

Be the first on your block to learn about how Direct3D 11 extends and
enhances Direct3D 10 with new hardware and API calls. This talk
discusses the features in Direct3D 11 that enable you to create
content that scales from small screens to high-resolution displays,
and across different CPU and GPU configurations.



Direct3D 11 Tessellation
Kev Gee

Direct3D 11 contains new programmable and fixed function stages
designed to enable powerful, flexible tessellation approaches at
interactive frame rates in games and modeling applications. Come with
us as we take a trip through the pipeline and hear how to prepare your
content pipelines to exploit this incredible step in the evolution of
graphics.



Direct3D 11 Compute Shader —More Generality for Advanced Techniques
Chas Boyd

The Direct3D API imposes some constraints on the processing model in
order to achieve optimal rendering performance. Direct3D 11 introduces
the Compute Shader as a way to access this computational capability
without so many constraints. It opens the door to operations on more
general data-structures than just arrays, and to new classes of
algorithms as well. Key features include: communication of data
between threads, and a rich set of primitives for random access and
streaming I/ operations. These features enable faster and simpler
implementations of techniques already in use, such as imaging and post-
processing effects, and also open up new techniques that become
feasible on Direct3D 11–class hardware.


High Level Shader Language (HLSL) Update—Introducing Version 5.0
Michael

Get ready to shift your shader development into high gear with the
next version of HLSL. This talk introduces new High Level Shader
Language features coming in Direct3D 11, including support for Dynamic
Shader Linkage and more. Hear how HLSL 5.0 brings support for
interfaces, objects, and polymorphism, and get yourself ready for this
exciting update to the world’s leading data-parallel programming
language!