More on next-gen 3D graphics hardware programmability
A few days ago I was talking about real-time 3D moving towards programmability and now Intel comes out with a more detailed report of their upcoming Larrabee technology. Basically Intel extending CPUs towards the GPU domain.
This is all very cool, but I don't see any mention on actual software technology. We know that Intel has been doing research on Ray Tracing, but the real issue for 3D in games is productivity. Not an easy problem because it involves tools and artists and programmers together.
With all this quality, productivity, predictions, etc, kind of topics floating around, recently, I've been using wikis, PowerPoint and Excel a lot more than compilers 8(
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Hhhmmmm maybe KazManager is
Hhhmmmm maybe KazManager is being formed?
I agree on the productivity issue. My company has been struggling to enter the 360/Ps3/PC game development market. It is really difficult to coordinate development of 'next gen' titles. Also you need larger teams. You can not just have one graphics, one ai, one gameplay, one physics, one audio, one user interface and one tools programmer anymore.
Just for the graphics engine you should have at least 3 or 4 programmers and if you are doing simultaneous multiple consoles then that number multiplies even more.
Some people solve this problem by using 3rd party engines like Unreal. I've never had to work with a 3rd party engine, but from what I heard many people who did use them ended up rewriting most of the code underneath, because it wasnt doing exactly what they wanted. As a result you have an Unreal engine shell with your own code underneath. So basically the benefit of the 3rd party engine is to helps you start developing quickly.
Now I think Unreal costs something like $750.000 to license, so smaller ompanies might have an issue with that.
More programmers are
More programmers are required, but even more artists are needed it seems. I'm not so worried about how many polygons can we draw, but rather where do those polygons come from.
One can do great things with fractals and terrain generators.. but when it comes to build animating human bodies or architectural structures.. then it's not so easy.
mumble mumble