Flight Simulator Team Talks at GDC

Just in case you’re going to be at the Game Developers’ Conference in San Jose next week and didn’t know, two members of the Flight Simulator development team will be giving presentations.

Adam Szofran will be giving a talk on the “Global Terrain Technology for Flight Simulation”:

This talk presents some of the terrain engine technology developed by Microsoft Game Studios. Of particular interest are techniques for handling the large amount of geospatial data required to represent the Earth from the surface up to orbital altitudes. Also discussed are fiber- and thread-based technologies for composing surface textures on the fly at run-time using a variety of geospatial data. The last part of the presentation focuses on how to triangulate a global, multiresolution terrain mesh requiring double-precision coordinates when the rendering hardware only supports single-precision coordinates.

and Adrian Woods will be presenting “The Make Art Button: Batches, Actions, and Scripts”:

Do something once, it’s creative. Do something twice, it’s repetitive. Do something three times, you can probably automate it.

This session gives artists tools they can use to help minimize repetitive tasks and maximize creativity and iteration. Using the dreaded DOS prompt, Photoshop actions and droplets, and MaxScript, the speaker shows how technical ability can actually unleash creativity. For example, you can use MaxScript to enable in-game visuals never seen before. You can use Photoshop actions to speed up production time. And you can use the DOS prompt. Spend less time getting carpal tunnel syndrome, and more time creating beautiful artwork.

I wish I was going to be there, but my current employer won’t let me…