Name: Games and Ray Tracing
Start: 2017-02-16T19:00:00+01:00
End: 2017-02-16T22:00:00+01:00
Location: Infi

What does it take to generate realistic scenes in a game? What are the trade-offs faced by game studios when implementing algorithms to this end? Have there been any fundamental breakthroughs in recent years regarding scene rendering? This edition of Papers We Love will answer these and more questions. Jacco Bikker will tell us about his adventures with ray tracing and how a Ph.D. dissertation lured him from game programming to the academic world.

You can check out the following sources to prepare for the meetup:

• Ingo Wald: Realtime Ray Tracing and Interactive Global Illumination, Ph.D. thesis, 2004, Computer Graphics Group, Saarland University (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7627/1eee79d6c3bf431954439081f4018faa88a9.pdf).

• Jacco Bikker: Real-time Ray Tracing through the Eyes of a Game Developer, RT '07 Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE Symposium on Interactive Ray Tracing. (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-7-eIprnKk5bzdmVDE4WEV4QWs/view?usp=sharing)

Title

Games and Ray Tracing: a follow-up on Ingo Wald's Ph.D. thesis "Realtime Ray Tracing and Interactive Global Illumination".

Abstract

Generating 3D images for games has traditionally been done by rasterization. Modern engines have enhanced the basic algorithm with approximations for shadows, reflection, indirect light and other features. This leads to complex programs with millions of lines of code, which are very expensive to maintain. Until recently, an alternative algorithm, ray tracing, had been regarded as too CPU-intensive to use in real-time applications like games. Ingo Wald's research shows that ray tracing is possible on normal PCs. This offers fundamental benefits, not only for the quality of the generated images, but also to achieve lower production costs of games. In this talk we will follow the quest of a game programmer that felt challenged by Ingo Wald and decided to jump into the academic world, with a promising algorithm that is able to handle even the most powerful systems.

Speaker: Jacco Bikker

Dr. Jacco Bikker teaches Optimization & Vectorization and Advanced Graphics in de Game & Media Technology Master at Universiteit Utrecht. Before this, he was responsible for the curriculum of the HBO bachelor Game Architecture & Design and the Game Technology master of the NHTV in Breda. He also has a background in game development, with ten years of experience in the Dutch game industry, where he worked for Lost Boys Interactive, Davilex, Overloaded and Vanguard.

Sponsor

This edition of Papers We Love Utrecht is made possible by the lovely folks at Infi (https://infi.nl/). We want to thank them for providing us with the space, food and drinks we need to make this edition a reality.

Schedule

19:00 - Welcome with food and drinks 19:30 - Talk + Discussion 20:15 - Announcements 21:30 - Fin

Laurens Duijvesteijn

Arian van Putten

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