Category Archives: PC Graphics

Otto Berkes – the last Xbox founder – leaves Microsoft

Way back when I was writing my OpenGL Book, I had the good fortune to run across some stupendous folks at Microsoft who were forthright and open and very very helpful to me, answering questions, implementation details, and generally reviewing … Continue reading

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Kick-ass graphics and Larrabee!

Back in 2008 I took a job with Intel. Intel was starting to ramp up its Larrabee effort and was looking to hire some knowledgeable graphics engineers who could also talk to game developers about *other* things like threading, performance, … Continue reading

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WARP-Microsoft’s “fast” DirectX software rasterizer

It turns out that Microsoft did something very interesting Windows 7, something incredibly cool in fact! Windows 7 will contain something called WARP10, which stands for Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform.  This is, in essence, a software rasterizer for DirectX.  WARP10 … Continue reading

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The start of the Intel Shopping Spree: Intel accquires physics engine maker Havok

The more time goes by, the more I really think that Intel want’s back into the graphics market. Graphics are the most obvious pathway to beefier machines for the consumer and the easier it is to create cool graphics that … Continue reading

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NVIDIA Releases Developer Tools

At the GDC, graphics chip maker NVIDIA announced they are releasing a bunch of updated and new tools. The tool upgrades are: FX Composer 2, PerfHUD 5, ShaderPerf 2. They are also releasing a new GPU-accelerated texture tool, plus a … Continue reading

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DirectX Next

DirectX Next – Oh Pleeeze! The slides from Microsoft’s Meltdown 2003 are available here. I’ve not been a fan of DirectX’s piecewise distribution of shader technology – not so much for the hardware folks as for the consumers. When I’d … Continue reading

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NVIDIA comes on board the OpenGL ARB

NVIDIA is now one of nine permanent board members, the other being 3Dlabs, ATI, Evans & Sutherland, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, and SGI. NVIDIA had been a term member. Apple, Dell Computer, Matrox, and Sun are term members. A term member … Continue reading

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ATI releases RenderMonkey 1.0

If you’re an artist leaning shader programming, a programmer interesting in having a shader testbed, or just interested in shader programming, ATI has released RenderMonkey 1.0. (To find out what RenderMonkey can do, look here.) According to ATI RenderMonkey has … Continue reading

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