Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Link Collection

The book "Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It?" can be found at

An overview on C99 support in Visual Studio 2013 can be found at

Adaptive Depth Bias for Shadow Maps

FSE decoding : how it works

Learning Three.js - WebGL for Dummies

Fuzebox

Blending of Normal Maps: Blending in Detail

What Every C Programmer Should Know About Undefined Behavior #1/3

CUB provides state-of-the-art, reusable software components for every layer of the CUDA programming model



Friday, January 10, 2014

Visual Studio 2013 - C99 support

I think using C99 in game development could be useful for large teams, especially if they are distributed over several locations.
So I thought I look a little bit closer on the support of C99 in Visual Studio 2013 (we also use VS 2013 with C99 now in my UCSD class).
The new features that are support in VS 2013 are:

New features in 2013
- variable decls
- _Bool
- compound literals
- designated initializers

Already available:
variadic macros, long long, __pragma, __FUNCTION__, and __restrict

What is missing:
- variable-length arrays (VLAs)
- Reserved keywords in C99
C99 has a few reserved keywords that are not recognized by C++:
restrict
_Bool -> this is now implemented ... see above
_Complex
_Imaginary
_Pragma
- restrict keyword
C99 supports the restrict keyword, which allows for certain optimizations involving pointers. For example:

    void copy(int *restrict d, const int *restrict s, int n)
    {
        while (n-- > 0)
            *d++ = *s++;
    } 
C++ does not recognize this keyword.
A simple work-around for code that is meant to be compiled as either C or C++ is to use a macro for the restrict keyword:

    #ifdef __cplusplus
     #define restrict    /* nothing */
    #endif 
(This feature is likely to be provided as an extension by many C++ compilers. If it is, it is also likely to be allowed as a reference modifier as well as a pointer modifier.)

Don't know if it is in there:
- hexadecimal floating-point literals like 
float  pi = 0x3.243F6A88p+03; 
- C99 adds a few header files that are not included as part of the standard C++ library, though:
<complex.h>
<fenv.h>
<inttypes.h>
<stdbool.h>
<stdint.h>
<tgmath.h>


References



Thursday, January 2, 2014

CSE 190 - GPU Programming UCSD class Winter 2014

GPU Programming
With the new console generation and the advances in PC hardware, compute support is becoming more important in games. The new course in 2014 will therefore start with compute and we will spend about a 1/3 of the whole course talking about how it is used on next-gen consoles and in next-gen games. We will also look into several case studies and discuss the feasibility to "re-factor" existing game algorithms so that they run in compute. An emphasis is put here on effects that are traditionally used for post-processing effects.

The remaining 2 / 3 of the course will focus on the DirectX 11.2 graphics API and how it is used in games to create a rendering engine for a next-gen game. We will cover most of the fundamental concepts like the HLSL language, renderer design, lighting in games, how to generate shadows and we also discuss how transparency can be mimicked with techniques other than alpha blending.
The course will end with a survey of different real-time Global Illumination algorithms that are used in different types of games.


First Class
Overview
-- DirectX 11.2 Graphics
-- DirectX 11.2 Compute
-- Tools of the Trade - how to setup your development system
Introduction to DirectX 11.2 Compute
-- Advantages
-- Memory Model
-- Threading Model
-- DirectX 10.x support

Second Class
Simple Compute Case Studies
- PostFX Color Filters
- PostFX Parallel Reduction
- DirectX 11 Mandelbrot
- DirectX 10 Mandelbrot

Third Class
DirectCompute performance optimization
- Histogram optimization case study

Fourth Class
Direct3D 11.2 Graphics Pipeline Part 1
- Direct3D 9 vs. Direct3D 11
- Direct3D 11 vs. Direct3D 11.1
- Direct3D 11.1 vs. Direct3D 11.2
- Resources (typeless memory arrays)
- Resource Views
- Resources Access Intention
- State Objects
- Pipeline Stages
-- Input Assembler
-- Vertex Shader
-- Tesselation
-- Geometry Shader
-- Stream Out
-- Setup / Rasterizer
-- Pixel Shader
-- Output Merger
-- Video en- / decoder access

Fifth Class
Direct3D 11.2 Graphics Pipeline Part 2
-- HLSL
--- Keywords
--- Basic Data Types
--- Vector Data Types
--- Swizzling
--- Write Masks
--- Matrices
--- Type Casting
--- SamplerState
--- Texture Objects
--- Intrinsics
--- Flow Control
-- Case Study: implementing Blinn-Phong lighting with DirectX 11.2
--- Physcially / Observational Lighting Models
--- Local / Global Lighting
--- Lighting Implementation
---- Ambient
---- Diffuse
---- Specular
---- Normal Mapping
---- Self-Shadowing
---- Point Light
---- Spot Light

Sixth Class
Physically Based Lighting
- Normalized Blinn-Phong Lighting Model
- Cook-Torrance Reflectance Model

Seventh Class
Deferred Lighting, AA
- Rendering Many Lights History
- Light Pre-Pass (LPP)
- LPP Implementation
- Efficient Light rendering on DX 9, 10, 11
- Balance Quality / Performance
- MSAA Implementation on DX 10.0, 10.1, XBOX 360, 11
Screen-Space Materials
- Skin

Eigth Class
Shadows
- The Shadow Map Basics
- “Attaching” a Shadow Map frustum around a view frustum
- Multi-Frustum Shadow Maps
- Cascaded Shadow Maps (CSM) : Splitting up the View
- CSM Challenges
- Cube Shadow Maps
- Softening the Penumbra
- Soft Shadow Maps

Nineth Class
Order-Independent Transparency
- Depth Peeling
- Reverse Depth Peeling
- Per-Pixel Linked Lists

Tenth Class
Global Illumination Algorithms in Games
- Requirement for Real-Time GI
- Ambient Cubes
- Diffuse Cube Mapping
- Screen-Space Ambient Occlusion
- Screen-Space Global Illumination
- Reflective Shadow Maps
- Splatting Indirect Illumination (SII)

Prerequisite
Each student should bring a DirectX 11.0 or higher capable notebook with Windows 7 or 8 into class. All the examples accompanying the class are build in C/C++ in Visual Studio 2013.