The NVIDIA Blog |  |
- CryEngine Gets Its First DirectX 12 Game at BUILD 2015
- Do the Robot: NVIDIA-Equipped Kids Storm FIRST Robotics Competition
- Made in the Shade: How NVIDIA Helped Cast More Realistic Shadows in GRAND THEFT AUTO V
| CryEngine Gets Its First DirectX 12 Game at BUILD 2015 Posted: 01 May 2015 06:37 PM PDT Just a day after NVIDIA helped stun the crowd at Microsoft's BUILD conference, we're behind a second jaw-dropping DirectX 12 demo that's grabbing headlines. King of Wushu, earmarked to be the first DX12 title in China, is also the first CryEngine-based game to take advantage of the next-generation graphics API. It took just two engineers just six weeks to port King of Wushu from DirectX 11 to DirectX 12, and its performance improvements are stunning.  NVIDIA GameWorks Effects Studio is working with game developer Snail Games to enhance King of Wushu with NVIDIA GameWorks technologies such as NVIDIA HairWorks, PhysX Clothing, and more that are yet to be announced. It's just the latest sign that DirectX 12 deployment is coming fast. Square Enix's moving demo during the Microsoft's BUILD keynote stunned the gamers with its use of advanced graphics to portray the human emotion of crying. There's more coming. At BUILD Microsoft called DirectX 12 the fastest adoption by titles under developments since Direct3D 9. Work on the new DirectX 12 application programming interface is now complete. Working drivers are released. Around 50% of gamers already have DirectX 12-ready hardware installed. In fact, NVIDIA’s Maxwell and Kepler GPU architectures already support DirectX 12, with support for Fermi coming later. DirectX 12 has experienced rapid adoption by a broad range of games engine. NVIDIA is working on DirectX 12 (DX12) on many different platforms- providing drivers, working with game engine providers, co-developing with Microsoft and helping game developers deploy their DX12 titles. And demos like the ones from this week show it's an effort that's paying off. The post CryEngine Gets Its First DirectX 12 Game at BUILD 2015 appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.    |
| Do the Robot: NVIDIA-Equipped Kids Storm FIRST Robotics Competition Posted: 01 May 2015 03:44 PM PDT Homeroom. Spring Break. Autonomous robots. They're all top of mind for the kid roboticists who streamed into the FIRST Robotics Competition in St. Louis, Missouri. Earlier this week, teams of high school students from around the globe flocked to the city that once represented America's "Gateway to the West." Each team hoped their homebrewed robots would rise to glory as the world's most capable kid-built bot.  Their robots came in all shapes and sizes. But they were united by a singular purpose: to move and stack recycling bins both autonomously and under human control. And a select cadre of teams brought bots equipped with a not-so-secret weapon: our Jetson TK1 DevKit.  The Tegra-powered Jetson TK1 DevKit gave these kids impressive capabilities. The DevKit is built around our Tegra K1 processor, whose 192 programmable cores that can deliver more than 300 Gigaflops of computing power. This power enabled their bots to take advantage of sophisticated parallel computing, computer vision and deep learning technologies. Two teams in particular — "Zebracorns" from Durham, North Carolina, and "Mars Wars" from Metamora, Illinois— aimed to use Jetson to master the competition's autonomous challenges. The results dazzled the competition's more than 30,000 spectators. The video below shows how the Zebracorns exploited the Jetson TK1 DevKit's real-time computer vision capabilities. You can see them trying to move green recycling bins to their side of the "playing field" — and stop another team from capturing them. Alas, even the most cutting-edge innovations weren't enough to stave off mechanical issues. Nor were they enough to ensure perfect strategy. After days of back-to-back matches, both teams were knocked out of competition. They'll be back. And so will more bots equipped with our technologies. The post Do the Robot: NVIDIA-Equipped Kids Storm FIRST Robotics Competition appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.   |
| Made in the Shade: How NVIDIA Helped Cast More Realistic Shadows in GRAND THEFT AUTO V Posted: 01 May 2015 06:00 AM PDT The virtual world of Grand Theft Auto V has it all. Gritty urban neighborhoods packed with action and intrigue. Sprawling forests and canyons teeming with wildlife. Even, um, immersive undersea environments ready for you to explore. It vividly demonstrates that no one can touch GTA V developer Rockstar Games when it comes to building digital realms. It's a great case study for how a technique we call NVIDIA Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows (PCSS) can add nuance and realism to virtual worlds. NVIDIA PCSS, part of our NVIDIA GameWorks library of developer tools, allows game developers to easily put realistic shadows in their games. Shadows are key to creating more realistic worlds because the human brain can perceive subtle differences in images – both consciously and unconsciously. Here's how it works: In nature, the closer a shadow is to the object casting the shadow, the more detailed it is. Conversely, the further the shadow is from the object casting the shadow, the more diffused, or softer, it is. NVIDIA PCSS mimics this. Shadows progressively soften as the distance from the object casting them increases. PCSS also reduces the prominence of shadow aliasing – the jagged lines on the edges of shadows. Additionally, PCSS uses a shadow buffer to handle overlapping character shadows to eliminate "double-darkened" portions. And because PCSS is DX11 powered, it works on DX11 capable GPUs from any vendor. The picture below, from GTA V, shows the benefits. The shadow for the motorcycle on the left is more detailed because it's close to the motorcycle. Only a small amount of diffusing occurs. In contrast, the palm tree's shadow becomes more diffuse as the distance from the palm tree to its shadow increases. Another example's below. The tree trunk's shadow is sharp at the base but softer as you travel along the shadow to the canopy of the tree. Now, compare it to a real shadow photographed on our campus (below). The shadow is sharp at the base of the tree trunk and becomes softer as you travel up the shadow to the tree's canopy. PCSS only gets better as shadows become more complex. The shadow on the sidewalk in this canal scene below is an effect you've surely seen before. Leaves and limbs overlap, blocking out most of the light. Light pops though gaps in the canopy. The same effect rendered without doing a good job of factoring in distance would result in unrealistic shadows. The result, an effect similar to what you can see in the photo, below. Let's look at another complex scene. The GTA V screenshot, below, could almost be a photo. Notice how the PCSS shadow of the Ferris wheel softens with distance. And notice how the shadow of the rollercoaster track softens as the track ascends. The result is more than just great screen shots – free of aliasing and stenciled shadows that remind gamers that "this is just a video game." Soft shadows provide valuable cues about spatial relationships that help users understand, intuitively, that they're inside a carefully constructed world. The post Made in the Shade: How NVIDIA Helped Cast More Realistic Shadows in GRAND THEFT AUTO V appeared first on The Official NVIDIA Blog.   |
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