We kept ourselves busy last week at the Game Developers Conference 2009 ― the show of the year for game developers. While there was talk about some attendance drop-off as the economy takes its toll on what some consider a “recession-proof” industry, in some ways GDC is more relevant than ever.

Openness

Openness was a big theme in our discussions at the show.  When we engage with developers, open industry standards are always top of mind ―the industry wants standards that are open and interoperable – we understand this and want to help enable it.

We applaud our friends at Mozilla and Khronos who are working to create a standard for accelerated 3D graphics on the Web. While delivering web-based games with 3D graphics may be in a primitive state today, this could eventually provide the Web with a new visual dimension not only for online gaming but for applications yet to be created. The possibilities are endless and exciting. 

We announced our own 3D graphics initiative last week with a beta release of AMD GPU PerfStudio 2.0, a platform-agnostic development tool for 3D graphics technology. With the tool, debugging is free to all developers, and ― as you should expect ― is based on open standards.

The Visual Experience

Another big theme at GDC this year was the visual experience ― something I predict is only going to continue to gain in importance, and not just for gamers. As CNET keenly pointed out, game play trumps beauty every time. When you’re at the cutting edge of a technology, it’s easy to focus on form over function.

At the same time, putting tools in the hands of developers to create cinema-quality games has delivered great innovation as well ― just look at Ruby.

I spoke last July about the advent of Eye-Definition computing when we launched our Cinema 2.0 initiative. How have we moved the needle since then?

-          Game realism, scale and reach are becoming increasingly advanced. Until recently the technology to deliver cinema-quality video games was just not there. With our ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 series our goal is to help developers make the most realistic games possible.  And with over 1 TeraFLOPS of computing power in a single card, we’ve come much closer to achieving that goal.

-          As AMD’s Neal Robison and Jules Urbach discussed in their GDC session on game physics and realism, developers rely on the total computing resources available to deliver the best gaming experience possible. We’re working with Havok to use their real-time physical simulations on ATI Stream technology to serve up unparalleled user experience. What’s great about this is that developers can access both CPU and GPU compute resources with OpenCL – bringing Fusion to life!

-          We also announced the availability of the ATI FirePro™ V7750 graphics accelerator for the high-end.  For you graphics professionals, I urge you to give this a shot. Large models, shader-intense apps, the ATI FirePro V7750 has its cake and eats it too.  No reason why you shouldn’t as well.

Happy gaming!

Nigel Dessau is senior vice president and chief marketing officer at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such links sites and no endorsement is implied.