Computer technology

Feature

  • Chair Entertainment’s Donald Mustard Discusses the Future of Multiscreen Gaming

    With the success of its Infinity Blade franchise, Chair Entertainment is one of the leaders in mobile game development today. We talk to them about the multiscreen future of gaming.

  • Digital Music and Solid-state Drives: A Grand Match

    Creating great digital music requires the latest technology and the best platforms. Here, we go through the process of recreating the music of a legendary instrument and the virtuosos who played it.

  • What’s Hot for Video Game Artists in 2012: Limitless Possibilities

  • What Lies Beneath the Sea: Shooting in Stereo 3D

    The challenges of using the latest stereoscopic 3D technology to film a 30-mile dive off the California coast.

  • That’s Entertainment: 3D Leaps From Theater to Home

    Next-generation technology is propelling not only blockbuster films, but also home entertainment -- including TV and video games -- into a new dimension

  • Video Editing Tools Bring Power to the People

    BOXX and CyberLink have teamed up to offer high-performance, turnkey video editing systems for pros and enthusiasts alike.

  • Tapping Into the Power: Graphics Performance Analyzers

    Unleashing the power of your work can be as simple as utilizing Graphics Performance Analyzers. Here’s how they’ve been used with the latest high-performance software from ArcSoft and Corel.

  • The Dead Rock: Hollywood Undead on Cakewalk SONAR

    The band Hollywood Undead talks about Cakewalk SONAR -- how they use it and how it has helped them realize their musical goals.

  • Under the Hood: A Look Inside the Ultrabook

    Take a look inside the Ultrabook as we investigate the new device’s power and versatility.

  • Crystal Ball: What’s the Future of Mobile?

    Futurist Brian David Johnson talks about what he expects from human-computer technology over the next two decades.

  • CES 2012: More Powerful PCs and New Ways to Game

    This year's CES saw a plethora of gaming innovations, including more 3D devices and increasingly powerful -- and portable -- PCs.

  • The New Mobile Landscape

    Mobile devices and computing have come a long way. But where will they go next?

  • Building the Old Republic: The Technology Behind BioWare’s First MMO

    Four years and plenty of hurdles have gone into BioWare’s first MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Here’s how it handled a beloved intellectual property in a new way.

  • Power to the People: The New Consumer Video Revolution

    Thanks to new workflow tools from CyberLink and Roxio, consumers have fast, easy and powerful options for handling their HD and stereoscopic 3D content.

  • Inside the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University

    Whether you’re an aspiring game developer or a career digital artist, a look inside the distinguished Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University will show you what technology is out there and what’s on the horizon.

  • Green Means GO! The Technology Behind the World Solar Challenge

    Building a solar-powered car to race across the Australian desert means worrying about more than gas and transmission! We take a look under the hood of the cars at the World Solar Challenge and examine the challenges of creating computer technology to take them the distance.

  • Getting Acquainted With the 3D Generation

    The last gaming revolution was HD -- if 3D is the next one, what do technology developers need to be ready? Here’s what influences the quality of 3D experiences in games, plus how a 3D image is created.

  • Strategic Insight: The Rise of Paradox Interactive

    Shams Jorjani of Paradox Interactive talks about the rapidly growing company, the process of marketing to niche audiences and developing for PCs, and the enduring appeal of the strategy game.

  • Looking Inside the NYU Game Center

    For potential digital arts students, top game-development programs coupled with state-of-the-art technology is a needed combination. Here, we take a look at the curriculum, technology and alumni of the NYU Game Center.

  • Back to the Borderlands

    We travel to a science fiction frontier and talk to Anthony Burch of Gearbox about Borderlands 2 and the challenges of making a good sequel in the face of massive fan anticipation.

  • India’s Growing Visual Effects Industry

    India has a robust -- and still developing -- visual effects industry. Visits to Crest Studios (a local production house) and Rhythm & Hues (an international producer with developers in India) show that the future looks bright indeed.

  • Taking the Mystery out of Middleware Perfomance

    Performance is everything in game development, and graphics performance analyzers (GPA) are key tools in ensuring that code is executing at its best. Here, we look at how GPA is helping with not only proprietary code, but also middleware -- in this case with user interface solutions from Autodesk Scaleform.

  • Watching Nations Fall

    David Luehmann, executive producer of Trion’s forthcoming massively multiplayer online real-time strategy game, End of Nations, talks about the game’s development.

  • Harnessing Digital Creative Power: Digital Composing

    Influential creators of digital art -- from photography to video to music -- are bound to be using the best tools to create their work. Here, composer Justin Lassen talks about the software tools that have made his digital music creation better than ever.

  • A Rage Like No Other

    Legendary developer John Carmack talks about id Software’s new post-apocalyptic first-person shooter, Rage, developing at 60 frames per second, and what it’s like to be working on what might be the best-looking shooter ever produced.

  • Transformational Force Meets Threaded Objects

    The Unity Engine 3.0 is making waves as a flexible and versatile 3D engine for all platforms. It promises to continue to bring innovation and vitality to the development middleware market.

  • Gaming the (Educational) System

    Get your gaming degree on! Game design programs require a lot of things, including specific interests, skills and tools. Here, DIG looks at what students need and where they should go to get properly schooled in game development.

  • The Future Is Solid: Solid-state Drives Revolutionize Gaming

    In game worlds, where a moment’s hesitation can mean a grisly death, speed is key -- but it’s not just your reflexes or even your graphics card that needs to be quick. Solid-state drives are set to deliver the next competitive edge.

  • No-holds-barred Production Rendering

    Blockbuster animated and visual-effects-driven films take audiences to fantastic places by using technology to render scenes, special effects and characters with breathtaking realism. Here’s how you can get the most out of these modern technologies.

  • Explosion of Creativity: Power of Online Communities

    Electronic communities spur technological and artistic digital developments. Fortunately, today’s online landscape is deeper and more readily available to game developers and other digital artists than ever before.

  • Nathan Camarillo of Crytek Talks Crysis 2 and CryEngine 3

    In this DIG exclusive video interview, Crytek’s Nathan Camarillo discusses the technical firepower of CryEngine 3, which is under the hood of the newest installment in the Crysis franchise. Camarillo, the executive producer of Crysis 2, runs down the most engaging, high-tech features of this anticipated shooter.

  • Peter Molyneux Talks Fable III and Commitment to PC Gaming

    Peter Molyneux -- a member of the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame who’s been knighted by the French government -- accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony at GDC 2011 this week. Here, he talks about Fable III and his love of PC gaming.

  • The Future Battlefield Comes Alive in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

    Ghost Recon: Future Soldier -- Ubisoft’s original Tom Clancy franchise -- brings the battlefield circa 2030 to life in 2011. Developers worked with the very real Future Soldier Initiative, a research and development program run by the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center, to create a game that reflects the latest innovations of real-life soldiers.

  • Capcom’s Jun Takeuchi Gets Emotional

    Capcom’s Jun Takeuchi, the producer of such games as Resident Evil 5 and Lost Planet, was recently promoted to corporate officer of Capcom, and deputy head of consumer games R&D division. He was introduced to gaming with the debut of Mario Bros. on Super Nintendo, and after a brief detour when he considered a career designing baby toys, he ended up at Capcom, where his first project was Street Fighter II.

  • The Consumer Video-editing Revolution

    The advent of digital video technologies has brought the Hollywood professional’s editing tools down to the consumer level. Now, even a teen can try his hand at becoming the next George Lucas or James Cameron -- and there’s a ready audience waiting on YouTube.

  • Developing and Optimizing Games for Netbooks

    These tips and tools will help you optimize the CPU and GPU of any game for netbooks, ultimately increasing your chances for success.

  • Rolling Thunder, Analytics and Performance Drive Need for Speed World

    Until now, racing games in the MMO era have tended to appeal only to true car enthusiasts. But with Need for Speed World, the car culture comes to a more casual audience.

  • The Force Remains Strong with LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars

    Developer TT Games has turned the LEGO Star Wars toys into a video game phenomenon -- each of the previous games has ended up on the top-20 list for that year’s global sales. The appeal is not just for kids: The newest game pushes the visuals, thanks to a brand-new game engine that makes the characters look more like the movies and less like toys.

  • Racing to the Finish Line: Chris Southall Talks Total War and Sonic

    Chris Southall grew up mastering car-racing video games in Great Britain before he decided to enter the game development field. Now technical director at SEGA Europe, he talks to DIG about using technology and workflow tools to race to the finish with such titles as the Total War franchise, from Empire to the upcoming Shogun 2.

  • Physics and Your Digital Golf Game

    An interview with B.C. (Charlie) Rasco, president of Smarter Than You software and co-author of Game Programming Gems, 8th edition.

  • Expanding the Definition of a PC

    Perhaps I’m stating one of the most painfully obvious things in the world, but I’ll come out and say it anyway: The definition of a PC as we know it is changing and evolving rapidly.

  • Leading New Developments in Visual Computing

    By improving visual-computing architecture, experts are simplifying and enhancing the process of developing realistic simulations for use in everything from 3D gaming to cancer treatment. Academics are teaching the next generation of developers how to use visual computing to improve results.

  • From GPS Weapons Systems to Video Game Engines

    Arti Gupta speaks with Randell Trulson, founder and CEO of Neuron Games Inc., about transitioning from developing GPS weapons systems to creating video games.

  • Game Engine Helps Create EA BioWare’s Dragon Age: Origins

    EA BioWare’s strategy of redefining development paradigms, engines and processes paid off in the 2009 release of Dragon Age: Origins, which maximizes the RPG for the multicore world. One reason for the game’s five-year development process was the desire to take maximum advantage of multicore chip architectures.

  • Humble Opinions: From The Sims to Indie Games

    Rod Humble, executive vice president and head of The Sims division at Electronic Arts, blows off steam between high-profile, big-revenue projects by cooking up home-brewed games he thinks of as art. His indie efforts include the experimental games The Marriage, Stars Over Half Moon Bay and this year’s Last Thoughts of the Aurochs.

  • Facebook Meets LinkedIn for Digital Artists

    A new social-networking platform, Filter Foundry, has set out to become a one-stop digital shop for creative professionals of every stripe.

  • Sid Meier’s Civilization V Scales to Build Empires

    Firaxis Games, the renowned game-development studio, used software tools to optimize its newest release from the popular Civilization franchise for PC hardware. The result is a monumental advance in gameplay experience that scales well, whether played on a laptop or a scorchingly fast desktop gaming rig.

  • Digital Distribution: What It Means for PC Gaming

    One of the most important developments of the past decade is the impact of digital distribution on all forms of multimedia content and delivery. The biggest forms of multimedia are music, movies, and of course, games. Admittedly there are others, such as pics, but these three are the biggest standouts for me.

  • Meet Mr. Industrial: Justin Lassen’s Music Machine

    This is a great time for digital musicians. New multi-core, multi-thread processors have caught up with even the most demanding artists, including digital musician Justin Lassen. Lassen, a composer, producer and instrumentalist, is renowned for his Synaesthesia series, which combined CG artists’ work with music.

  • Tools Knock Down Roadblocks in Filmmaking Workflow

    Digital-content producers are turning creativity into products faster -- and more profitably -- using new workflow tools from Adobe Systems. At Bandito Brothers, filmmakers now finish jobs that used to take a week in mere days.

  • Inside R.U.S.E.: Hands-on Means Exactly That

    Eugen Systems' World War II-based strategy game R.U.S.E. pioneers multitouch screen interactivity for real-time-strategy games and pushes multicore processing with up to 25 million on-screen objects.

  • EA Sports Moves Graphics-rich Gaming Online

    Golf games for the PC are experiencing a revolution. EA Sports seeks to ensure that its latest games can be played on all PCs, from netbooks to high-end machines.

  • Physics Meets Art: Playing With Fire and Water

    Krzysztof Mieloszyk, one of the authors of Game Programming Gems 8  and a professor at the Gdansk University of Technology, is an expert on creating realistic-looking explosions, water flow, collisions and fire in game environments. I recently spoke with him about the chapter he wrote about the application of quasi fluid dynamics for arbitrary closed meshes.

  • Star Trek Online Goes Where No Game Has Gone Before

    Star Trek Online takes an established franchise into online gaming for the first time; Cryptic Studios used graphics performance analytics to raise the bar on MMO games.

  • Napoleon: Total War -- The Little General Larger Than Life

    Getting the military history details right in Napoleon: Total War -- from period maps to the type of backpacks soldiers carried -- was crucial to Creative Assembly’s game developers. Heavy customization of details, which makes for better gameplay, was made possible by the use of multithreading work techniques.

  • Processing Power Results in Rapid-fire Moviemaking

    Digital moviemaking has attracted a generation of savvy, creative storytellers who push the medium to its limits. But the image processing involves staggering amounts of data. CineForm’s compression format lets it be part of a digital workflow solution.

  • How Avatar Leaped Into the Third Dimension

    Ubisoft, maker of best-selling games Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, collaborated with filmmaker James Cameron and his Lightstorm Entertainment to create original video-game prequels for the 3D movie Avatar. Proprietary 3D stereo technology extends the world of Pandora beyond 3D-ready HDTVs and LCD monitors.

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