Intel is at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) in San Francisco and had some interesting new software on offer for developers. Firstly Intel wants developers to be able to take full advantage of its forthcoming HD Graphics solutions in Haswell and has developed two new real-time rendering extensions to help Haswell graphics ‘shine’. Also Intel has been working on making the Ivy Bridge or better Intel® Quick Sync Video acceleration functionality work with popular media software such as HandBrake.
Real-time rendering for Intel HD Graphics platforms
As mentioned above, Intel has readied two new real-time rendering extensions accessible through Direct X. The first of these is called PixelSync. Intel says that this extension “provides access to underlying hardware that allows programmers to properly composite partially transparent pixels without the need for an expensive sorting operation. Game developers have long awaited this capability in order to more realistically render smoke, hair, windows, foliage, fences and other complex geometry and natural phenomena”. Having this capability available to the “millions of consumers” who are going to buy Haswell processor equipped PCs is “very exciting” according to a senior Codemasters exec.
The second extension is called InstantAccess. This extension works by “allowing physical memory to be written and read from either the CPU or from the built-in Intel HD Graphics”. The creative director of Creative Assembly (Total War: ROME II), Mike Simpson, said both the new extensions were very useful in developing modern games. Making games perform and look great on any platform whether it be “a slim and sexy Ultrabook or a monster desktop” has become a reality thanks to Intel’s new extensions, he said.
Intel flags up the fact that “Initially, these extensions are available through Intel's implementation of DirectX and on Intel 4th gen Core platforms only”. Documentation for these new extensions can be found here.
Media software acceleration using Intel® Quick Sync Video
Handbrake is a very popular free and open source video transcoding program. The hardware built into the latest Intel Core processors can accelerate this process if applications are written with the correct optimisations. “The HandBrake team has been working closely with Intel to leverage the advantages of Intel Quick Sync Video,” said Tim Walker of the HandBrake team. “While testing is in the early stages, initial results show promise in terms of performance and significantly reduced CPU usage during the decode/encode process, especially for mobile and low-power CPU parts. Early test builds will be available shortly.”
Gesture interfaces; Intel is also getting in on the action
In addition to the above tools Intel has made ready a production release of the Intel® Perceptual Computing Software Development Kit (SDK) 2013. This software kit, in tandem with Intel’s Interactive Gesture Camera, will enable developers to craft computer-human interaction interfaces including “close-range finger or hand-tracking, speech recognition, facial analysis and augmented reality”. Intel reminds us that this style of interaction has applications far beyond gaming. From now until September 2013 developers are invited to compete for $800k of prizes by producing innovative and compelling uses for Intel’s Perceptual Computing hardware and software.
