Help end child hunger

ARF

Jun 162011
 

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a programming toolkit for application developers. It enables the academic and enthusiast communities easy access to the capabilities offered by the Microsoft Kinect device connected to computers running the Windows 7 operating system.

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes drivers, rich APIs for raw sensor streams and human motion tracking, installation documents, and resource materials. It provides Kinect capabilities to developers who build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

Jun 082011
 

In March, 2010, the Khronos group approved an extension to add timers to OpenGL. The version was 3.2. As of OpenGL 3.3 this functionality has become part of the specification.

As mention in the Very Simple Profile Library page, profiling is an essential technique to truly understand how to improve the performance of an application. Being able to get time measurements is important both in the development stage as well as during run-time after the application has been released. OpenGL Timer Queries allows us to profile the GPU. i.e. to determine the amount of time it takes to execute a command, or sequence of commands in the GPU.

A tutorial is available in here describing the OpenGL timer functions, showing how to use them, and describing a double buffer approach to prevent the application from being stalled while waiting for query results.

Jun 032011
 

A Siggraph 2010 course

“There are strong indications that the future of interactive graphics programming is a model more flexible than today’s OpenGL/Direct3D pipelines. As such, graphics developers need to have a basic understanding of how to combine emerging parallel programming techniques and more flexible graphics processors with the traditional interactive rendering pipeline. The first half of the course introduces attendees to modern parallel graphics architectures and parallel programming models, and describes current and near-term use of these new capabilities for real-time rendering. The second half of the course looks farther ahead at trends emerging in the academic literature and offline rendering communities as researchers use these many-core parallel architectures to explore future rendering pipelines. Topics include future, and more flexible, rendering pipelines that support true motion blur, depth-of-field, curved surfaces, and complex dynamic lighting. The course concludes with a panel, moderated by the creator of OpenGL Kurt Akeley, on the role of fixed function hardware in future graphics architectures.”

Slides available in here.