Deferred Lighting: The backdoor, Part 2

In the first part of this article, we covered the a little theory of what this technique means as well as we set the foundations of code that started its execution on main. Now, the functional parts that are needed to create magic are going to be explained as follows.

When the Renderer class is allocated, also the constructor method is called, and here many preparations take place; in the following order: load each necessary CG shader, initialize the sphere lights (8) and place them across the heightmap, create the projection matrix and the root scene node to render objects, load the splash screen as a mesh, and set some configuration of the GCM. It is important to have considered the mesh "Sphere", this object will be the one in charge of draw into the scene the values of each light, in other words, the light will affect only on the area this sphere is colliding with, nothing else, process that differs from a ray tracing procedure. The code for what was explained before is here:

Deferred Lighting: The backdoor, Part 1

Today, I was asked about the theory behind the Deferred Lighting procedure, of which, to be honest, I was starting to forget (too much Functional programming lately); but what is well learned, is never forgotten.

The main idea behind this technique is to delay as much as possible the calculations of light over the objects on the scene, only those that deserve to be rendered will be performed, otherwise will be discarded. This also relies on "several" passes, which also means, the first time an scene is going to be rendered as normal: vertex positions, its normals and the material for each surface and instead of sending it to the screen it is transformed into a "texture" with information of the depth, normals and specular. This last texture becomes the input for the next step, where lighting takes place using the information from the variables from the previous phase. And then one "last" pass calculates all objects in the scene once again but this time it combines the color from the texture with the emissive and ambient light. The image below shows graphically how they are all added:

Scalability and consistency in Server Based Network Gaming

While I was doing the MSc in Newcastle, we needed to create an academic paper for the Game Networking module. So, now I am doing it public so other people, and specially researchers, can see that I have strong academic background and I am able to write papers. Of course, I am open to comments and always learning new ways to do it better ;)

This paper describes the capabilities of a Server based communication between two or many PS3 consoles as a way to efficiently transfer data using the TCP/IP protocols with the hardware embedded (Ethernet Cable and Wireless 802.11G). Also, it coves the common problems arising with the inclusion of more systems in the same network in order to keep communication consistency as well as some performance efficacy under different scenarios where low and high data transfer is required in between systems, whilst just one active server socket is kept open. When low demand applications are running and as highly bandwidth consuming case both are presented, in order to estimate how many consoles could be brought into the same network without a hit on game accomplishment.

Voxel Render Engine for PS3 SDK

Hello Everyone!!

Long time I have not been here, not even to check if someone is trying to spam comments all around. Well, the good news it is that today I wanted to release my Master Thesis, which was about a way to display voxelized models using the PS3 SDK.

I did not do it before because I was "under NDA", an agreement between Newcastle University and SCE Europe. however I think by this time, they do not care anymore about releasing key points and ideas about what my document is about.

Deferred Lighting on PS3

After almost 4 weeks trying to work out Deferred lighting on the PS3, we did it!! Thanks to the help and knowledge of almighty Richard, we were able to render to multiple phases and output the results on a PS3, something quite similar to what is shown on the initial image.

But less words, more action:

Next Time, Take Security More Carefully

Valued PlayStation(R)Network/Qriocity Customer:

We have discovered that between April 17 and April 19, 2011,
certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account
information was compromised in connection with an illegal and
unauthorized intrusion into our network. In response to this
intrusion, we have:

1) Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services;

Marvel vs Capcom 3

Since a child, I always loved videogames. Right now I could be considered a hardcore gamer who critics everything about them, years of experience has delivered me there. Lately just few games make me feel anxious for play them and one of that list, with a wait of more than 10 years, is Marvel vs Capcom 3.

I know, this a blog for Mobile devices, however this time, specially this game, deserves the attention of everyone. Maybe I am highlighting my expectatives too far away but long time ago that I have not felt exited for a release of a game.

All of this was the result of the opening trailer, which of couse is here: