Last Updated:
07
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17
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2008
NVIDIA Developer Newsletter #41, July 2008
In This Issue:
NVISION 2008 is almost upon us, heralding NVIDIA's
first North American developer event in over two years and with a spectacular special offer on next generation hardware.
We're also excited to report new developments that you can already
use in the realms of GPU-enhanced game physics
(with a competition!), GPU-based High Powered Computing with CUDA, a new trio of 3D Software Development Tools, presentations on Interactive Ray Tracing, and more -- including our
monthly developer survey and GPU
giveaway.
NVISION 2008 is coming to San Jose,
California, August 25-27 -- a 55-hour, jaw-dropping, soul-jolting,
visual feast that will overwhelm your senses and leave you wanting
more.
Aside from amazing keynotes from industry luminaries and an expo hall
featuring leading visual computing companies, the Professional
Developer Program will bring together 77
Hours of sessions on new technologies -- some never presented
before anywhere -- into a single unified venue for the first
time.
Technical
Session Invitation and Program Listing (PDF, ~300kb).
Besides the Developer Conference itself, while in your "off duty" hours
at NVISION you can also compete for hundreds of thousands of dollars in
cash and prizes at the GeForce
LAN, the legendary LAN party five years in the making; or enjoy NVScene,
an unprecedented largest-ever gathering of creative minds in demoscene,
machinima, game modding, and digital art on US soil.
The NVIDIA Developer Conference features numerous technical sessions.
Here's a list of those we've chosen with special interest to game developers.
For a full list, click here.
- Mobile Visual Computing
- Mike Rayfield, NVIDIA
- The Future of Rendering
- Rolf Herken, mental images
- Game Physics: The Next Frontier
- Manju Hegde, NVIDIA
- High Performance Computing
- David Kirk, NVIDIA
- Unreal Engine 3: Features and Tools Demo
- Tim Sweeney, Epic Games
- Developer Tools Showcase
- Randy Fernando, NVIDIA
- The New "X" Factor: An Introduction to NVIDIA PhysX
- James Dolan, Adam Moravansky, and Bob Whitecotton, NVIDIA
- mental mill & MetaSL: Advances in GPU Shader Authoring
- Rolf Berteig, mental images
- The Art of PhysX: A Guide to Game Creativity
- Dane Johnson, Monier Maher, and David Schoemehl, NVIDIA
- Beautiful Women of the Future
- Kevin Bjorke, NVIDIA
- Shape of Things to Come: Next-Gen Physics Deep Dive
- Bruno Heidelberger, Simon Schirm, NVIDIA
- Introduction to DirectX 11
- Kev Gee, Microsoft
- Life on the Bleeding Edge: More Secrets of the NVIDIA Demo Team
- Eugene d'Eon, NVIDIA
- Advances in Shader Writing with mental ray
- Andy Kopra, mental images
- mental images 3D Web Services Platform: RealityServer
- Ludwig von Reiche, mental images
- Easy Immersion with NVIDIA 3D Stereo
- Slava Gostrenko, NVIDIA
- Interactive Raytracing with CUDA (New Addition!)
- David Leubke and Steven Parker, NVIDIA
Follow this
link for registration and schedule info.
URL: http://www.nvision2008.com/Professionals/game.cfm
The latest NVIDIA
PhysX System Software is now available for download -- this new
version adds support for NVIDIA PhysX on GeForce 9800 GTX, GeForce GTX
280, and GeForce GTX 260 GPUs, including SLI configurations. The new
system software is now also automatically included in the NVIDIA GeForce driver
package as of version 177.39.
For a list of NVIDIA PhysX features, click
here.
URLs:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_8.06.12_whql.html
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/Find.aspx
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/physx_features.html
http://physxcomp.thegamecreators.com/
is the address you'll need to try your hand at the Game Creators/PhysX
demo competition. Software and assets are provided free and prizes are
to be supplied by ASUS and EVGA.
The new competetion is really two contests in one: both a challenge to
create new demos for specific features of the NVIDIA PhysX
toolkit running within The Game Creator's Dark Physics
software, and also a challenge to create an "Über demo" with the simple
criterion: knock our socks off!
Initial proposal deadline for entry is July 20th, 2008 -- with a
closing deadline for finished demos: August 31st. See here for
all the details, and here for
downloadable software (including a complete Dark Physics package) and
freely-available media files that you may use (or not) to build your
winning demo!
Video: A Quick Dark
Physics How-To
URLs:
http://physxcomp.thegamecreators.com/
http://physxcomp.thegamecreators.com/details.html
http://physxcomp.thegamecreators.com/downloads.html
http://www.youtube.com/v/8uTBHyC4f94
Hardware acceleration is gaining momentum as a disruptive technology
that brings the power of high performance computing to the desktop.
But what about its application in the data centre and performance
compared to traditional CPU clusters?
This webinar presented by NVIDIA and Acceleware examines recent
developments in GPU-based hardware accelerated clusters, including
compelling performance, economic benefits and examples of their
commercial viability.
To Find out more, listen to the archive:
URL: http://www.acceleware.com/newsEvents/webinars.cfm#HAC
Encoding MP3s always seem to take longer than it should. Do you wish you
could find a way to make the process run faster?
Now there is a way -- you can compete to write a simple code that will
speed up MP3 encoding on a CUDA-enabled
GPU, and the winner will receive a US$5,000.00 cash prize.
Check out the current CUDA
Coding Contest featuring a modified MP3 LAME Encoder (NVIDIA
supplies the initial "starting gate" code). Sign up and show us your
coding skills, and you can enter for a chance to win some cash.
Contest Deadline: July 25th!
URL: http://cudacontest.nvidia.com/
If spring is beta season, then summer must be time for full bloom. With this newsletter
we're please to announce the full release of three of NVIDIA's most popular 3D software
development tools: PerfHUD 6, the NVIDIA Shader Debugger, and FX Composer 2.5.
We are proud to announce the release of the NVIDIA
Shader Debugger, a full-featured pixel shader debugger that allows
shaders to be debugged just like CPU code.
The Shader
Debugger offers:
- Cross-Language, Cross-API Support
- Microsoft DirectX 9 & 10 (HLSL)
- OpenGL (CgFX & COLLADA FX Cg)
- Debugger Run Control
- Single Step, Run to Cursor, Run to Bookmark
- Variable Inspection
- View Globals, Parameters, and Local Variables
- Technique, Pass, and Function selection
- Watch Expressions
- Visual Debugging
- Value Visualization (Map variables to colors)
- Conditional Pixel Kill
You can download a 30-day evaluation of the NVIDIA Shader Debugger here.
A free license for non-commercial use is also available.
The NVIDIA Shader Debugger is the first product in the NVIDIA
Professional Developer Tools lineup. These are new tools directed at
professional developers who need more industrial-strength capabilities
and support. For example, the NVIDIA Shader Debugger will run on
leading GPUs from all vendors.
In addition to the free
versions available for non-commercial use, some of the new tools will
be subject to a license fee, but they will be priced to be accessible
to developers. Our existing free tools (such as FX Composer, PerfHUD,
Texture Tools, and our SDKs) will not be affected -- they will continue
to be available to all developers at no cost.
URL: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/nv_shader_debugger_home.html
FX
Composer 2.5, the latest version of NVIDIA's powerful shader
development environment, has been released.
FX Composer supports DirectX, OpenGL, HLSL, Collada FX, and CgFX, as
well as the .fbx, .x, .3ds, .obj, and .dae file formats for importing
geometry.
Version 2.5 adds:
- DirectX 10 support, including geometry shaders and stream out
- Particle Systems
- Visual Styles
- Major User Interface Improvements
- Remote Control over TCP/IP
- Support for the NVIDIA
Shader Debugger
- New Sample
Projects
Check out our new FX
Composer 2.5 Overview video, or to start working with it yourself,
Download
it now!
URLs:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/fx_composer_home.html
href="http://developer.download.nvidia.com/tools/FX_Composer/2.5/Videos/FXComposer2.5-Overview.wmv">http://developer.download.nvidia.com/tools/FX_Composer/2.5/Videos/FXComposer2.5-Overview.wmv
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/fxc_sample_projects.html
NVIDIA
PerfHUD is a powerful real-time performance analysis tool for
Direct3D applications, and it is widely used by the world's
best game developers.
Major new features in PerfHUD
6.0 include:
- No longer requires an instrumented driver on Vista!
- Supports GeForce 8 and 9 GPUs
- SLI Support [Youtube] [MOV]
[WMV]
- Texture Visualization and Overrides [Youtube] [MOV]
[WMV]
- API Call List
- Dependency View
- New CPU/GPU Timing graph
- And
much more!
Also, don't miss our video screencasts for PerfHUD 6:
URL: http://developer.nvidia.com/object/perfhud_home.html
NVIDIA will be presenting talks, and co-exhibiting with Natural Motion Ltd., at the
upcoming XNA Gamefest in
Seattle, running July 22 and 23. Visit the NVIDIA PhysX team and
Natural Motion in the Exhibitors Hall, or arrange to discuss privately
in Suite #310 (you can set up a meeting online, via the Gamefest web site).
Be sure to catch these NVIDIA conference presentations:
- Water-Tight, Textured, Displaced Subdivision Surface Tessellation
Using Direct3D 11
Ignacio Castano, NVIDIA
- In this talk, we discuss using the Direct3D 11 pipeline to
tessellate displacement mapped subdivision surfaces. We cover
motivation for use of tessellation in games. We also discuss
various issues related to water-tight approximation of surfaces.
Finally, we cover content creation issues, tools, and model
quality.
- Graphics Performance and Authoring Tools for Direct3D 10
Daniel Horowitz and Jeff Kiel, NVIDIA
- In this fast-paced, one-hour talk, attendees learn all about
NVIDIA's latest debugging, performance analysis, and content
creation tools. It includes several recently-released products such
as PerfHUD 6, FX Composer 2.5, and the NVIDIA Shader Debugger. For
each product, key features for DirectX developers are demonstrated
with the goal of helping attendees to rapidly increase their
productivity.
URLs:
http://www.xnagamefest.com/
http://www.naturalmotion.com/
As we announced in the May
Newsletter, NVIDIA, in conjunction with publisher Addison-Wesley, has been
making some of the very best GPU information and
documentation available online -- for free!
In the weeks since our last
update, we've serialized even more of GPU Gems
2:
Prefer a printed copy for your desk? Newsletter readers can purchase beautifully
printed versions of all our books at a 30% discount,
courtesy of InformIT and Addison-Wesley. Just follow this link.
URLs:
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/gpugems2_part01.html
http://www.informit.com/promotion/136275
This year's SIGGRAPH will
again see NVIDIA
presenting leading-edge development work on topics ranging from
character animation, rendering, CUDA High-Performance Computing, Interactive
ray tracing, and more. NVIDIA will be presenting a special full day of
technical talks on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 in Room 405 of the Los
Angeles Convention Center, two separate talks as part of the standard
SIGGRAPH programming, and we'll be involved throughout SIGGRAPH and the
associated graphics symposia.
This year's NVIDIA SIGGRAPH talks on Wednesday are:
- Next-Generation Hardware Rendering of Displaced Subdivision Surfaces
9:00 – 10:00 am, Wednesday, August 13, Room 405
Ignacio Castaño, NVIDIA Corporation
- In this talk we will provide an overview of the next-generation
tessellation pipeline and its motivation. Our focus will be on one
of the primary applications: rendering of displaced subdivision
surfaces, which dramatically increases the realism of animated
characters. We will also show how to adapt your production
pipelines in order to create compelling content that takes
advantage of this innovative rendering model.
- Real-Time Rendering of Realistic Hair
10:15 – 10:45 am, Wednesday, August 13, Room 405
Sarah Tariq, NVIDIA Corporation
- Simulating and rendering realistic hair with tens of thousands of
strands is something that until recently was prohibitively
expensive for real-time use. In this session, we will discuss how
to render realistic hair with high geometric complexity in
real-time on the GPU. Amongst other things we will cover efficient
creation and rendering of high amounts of geometry for hair
(essential for creating realistic hair especially when in motion),
shading, self-shadowing, level of detail, and important performance
optimizations. We will also talk about how to use next-generation
hardware tessellation to make creating and rendering hair much more
intuitive and efficient.
- Adaptive Terrain Tessellation on the GPU
10:45 – 11:15 am, Wednesday, August 13, Room 405
Iain Cantlay, NVIDIA Corporation
- Next-generation techniques implement highly-programmable
tessellation entirely on the GPU. We explain how tessellation can
be applied to terrain rendering with displacement mapping. Our
tessellation scheme is adaptive, with the polygon LOD varying as a
function of terrain roughness and also with view-dependent
silhouette detection.
- Getting Physical:
Solutions and Case Studies for Creating Scalable PhysX Content
11:30 am – 12:30 pm, Wednesday, August 13, Room 405
Monier Maher, NVIDIA Corporation
- Using physical simulation in applications takes their level of
immersion to new heights. NVIDIA’s PhysX enables developers to add
an unprecedented number of physical objects into scenes while
maintaining high performance. This talk will feature the latest
PhysX features and tools as well as real case studies that
highlight common challenges and solutions.
- A New Generation of Performance Analysis and Shader Authoring Tools
2:00 – 3:00 pm, Wednesday, August 13, Room 405
Jeffrey Kiel and Christopher Maughan, NVIDIA Corporation
- This talk covers the latest releases of NVIDIA's popular PerfKit
and FX Composer software products, as well as the brand-new NVIDIA
Shader Debugger. First, learn how to extract maximum GPU
performance using PerfHUD 6.0 (for real-time debugging and
profiling - with tons of powerful new features), GLExpert (for
OpenGL debugging), and PerfSDK (an API for accessing GPU
performance counters).
- Next, see how FX Composer 2.5 and the Shader Debugger can make
shader authoring, profiling, and debugging a breeze for
programmers, artists, and technical directors. This session
showcases new features such as a source-level shader debugging for
Cg and HLSL10 shaders, Direct3D 10 support (including geometry
shaders, stream out, and texture arrays), visual models & styles,
particle systems, a revamped user interface, and much more.
- CUDA: The Democratization of Parallel Computing
3:45 – 4:45 pm, Wednesday, August 13, Room 405
Paulius Micikevicius, NVIDIA Corporation
- Massively parallel computing, once the domain of supercomputers, is
now widely accessible in the form of millions of CUDA-enabled GPUs.
These GPUs are fully programmable, support tens of thousands of
concurrent threads, and have accelerated computations in a variety
of disciplines by up to 2 orders of magnitude.
- We will provide an overview of the newest GPU architecture, the
CUDA programming model, and latest development tools. CUDA enables
efficient implementation of parallel algorithms by providing a
small set of readily understood extensions to the C/C++ languages,
eliminating the need to learn a new language. Development is
facilitated by insightful profiling and debugging tools. Since the
GPU is the only widely available commodity "manycore" chip, we will
explore it as a research platform for parallel programming and
architecture.
- Interactive Ray Tracing with CUDA
New Addition!
5:00 – 6:00 pm, Wednesday, August 13, Room 405
David Luebke and Steven Parker, NVIDIA Corporation
- Ray tracing has long been associated with high-quality graphics,
but it has not been suitable for interactive use. With CUDA and an
NVIDIA GPU, it is now possible to ray trace reflections from curved
surfaces, refractions, and accurate shadows. By combining these
effects with rasterization to efficiently compute viewing ray
intersections, accurate inter-reflections and other effects can be
achieved at high resolutions and frame rates.
In addition to these standard-program talks:
- Image-Space Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion
Louis Bavoil, Miguel Sainz, and Rouslan Dimitrov, NVIDIA Corporation
- Ambient occlusion is a lighting model that approximates the amount
of light reaching a point on a diffuse surface based on its
directly visible occluders. It provides a soft shadow appearance
which enhances depth perception and spatial relationship between
objects. In this talk, we will present a new algorithm for
rendering ambient occlusion as a post-processing pass by sampling a
depth buffer and its associated normal buffer. We will discuss how
to integrate this approach in real-time engines as well as provide
performance analysis.
- Real Time Hair Simulation and Rendering on the GPU
Sarah Tariq and Louis Bavoil, NVIDIA Corporation
- Simulating and rendering realistic hair with tens of thousands of
strands is something that until recently was not possible in real
time. In this talk we present a method for simulating and
rendering realistic hair in real time using the power and
programmability of modern GPUs (Graphics Processing Units). Our
method utilizes new features of graphics hardware (including Stream
Output, Geometry Shader and Texture Buffers) that make it possible
for all simulation and rendering to be processed on the GPU in an
intuitive manner, with no need for CPU intervention or read back.
In addition, we propose fast new algorithms for inter-hair
collision, and collision detection and resolution of interpolated
hair.
URLs:
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/siggraph-2008.html
http://www.siggraph.org/s2008/
http://www.siggraph.org/s2008/attendees/techtalks/sessions.php
In each NVIDIA Developer Newsletter, we ask your opinion. Answer soon and you could be the
winner of a new high-end NVIDIA Graphics Card.
This month we congratulate researcher and developer John Ashley of SGI.
John was the winner of last
month's survey giveaway. We've sent him a powerful new NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700 professional
graphics card as his prize -- perfect for use with CUDA.
For July, we'd appreciate your help in planning details for NVISION 2008's Events
for Developers
This offer is open only to newsletter readers. Be sure to have your
answers in no later than the deadline: Wednesday, 23 July 2008.
URL: http://surveys.nvidia.com/index.jsp?pi=180fe4ebe2436360eb517b5e72f74ee5
- Curious about Previous NVIDIA Developer Newsletters? Try these:
- Issue 40: June 2008
- Issue 39: May 2008
- Issue 38: GDC 2008
If you prefer not to receive the NVIDIA Developer Newsletter in the future,
please unsubscribe at http://lyris01.nvidia.com/devRelRegister/frmOptOut.asp.
NVIDIA® Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) is the worldwide leader in graphics
processors and media communications devices. For more information about
NVIDIA please visit our website: www.nvidia.com.
© 2008 NVIDIA Corporation
