GDC 2016 is next week and everyone here is working hard to finish the preparations. I am particularly trilled because for the first time I will be joining the fun at the conference personally (wooohooooo!). Even better, I and Alex will attend the lectures whereas the rest of the team will be tending to visitors at our booth.
We were quick to schedule the lectures we are waiting for the most and now it’s a great time to share it.

Game architecture and components systems in Lumberyard by Amazon

Amazon’s recent announcement of the Lumberyard engine is very exciting. As you know, Coherent products currently have integrations in UE4 and U3D but we are constantly looking for new ways to extend our support to other notable engines. I am a huge fan of UE4 (I even am teaching a course using UE4 currently) but learning the ins and outs of a new engine is always refreshing.

DX12 and Vulcan – the new kids in the block

Writing rendering code for consoles is awesome – you get extreme control over the CPU-to-GPU communication and are able to optimize according to your usage patterns. Fortunately, Microsoft and the Khronos group realized that this kind of API is needed on PC too and the newly released DX12 and Vulkan provide the same effect. We already have some experience with both of these interfaces but we are excited (Alex in particular) to see what others have made with the technology.

Taming the jaguar by Insomniac Games

Insomniac games are amongst my favorite game creators – I still have the first Ratchet and Clank (as well as 4 of its sequels) next to my PS2. Besides creating awesome games they are famous for the quality of talks they deliver (e.g. Mike Acton’s Data-oriented design) which makes this optimization lecture much more exciting.

Advanced VR rendering performance by Valve

It’s great to have the opportunity to work with many VR/AR-focused companies. VR has much more strict performance requirements (such as achieving 120 FPS) which also means that we need to be up to date with the latest R&D in the area.

How does your GDC timetable look like? Share it below, on twitter or in the forums. If you’d like to meet us at GDC, you can either schedule a meeting or come visit booth 635.

See you in SF!