GDC 2016 sessions detailed with multiple DirectX 12, Vulkan events

The 30th Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2016 will take place from Monday 14th March to Friday 18th March and the schedule of sessions and events is now available for interested parties to peruse/book for attendance. There should be plenty of gaming graphics insights news and announcements coming up during the week with speakers from many top gaming software companies as well as hardware/software giants like ARM, AMD, Intel, Nvidia, Microsoft and Oculus.

The GDC organisers have published a new blog post which says that the first two days of the conference will host the many Bootcamp and Tutorial sessions. Beyond the gaming niceties such as level design, art direction and storytelling fundamentals, advanced graphics techniques tutorials will cover in-depth important new technologies like DirectX 12 and Vulkan. While "special emphasis will be placed on the new programming model and HW capabilities enabled by DirectX 12," from Nvidia's and AMD's demo and developer technology teams (among others), I have spotted various Vulkan focussed sessions such as one presented by ARM and Epic Games, plus an Nvidia hosted session which covers Multi-GPU techniques in both DX12 and Vulkan. Here is a list of the DirectX 12 inclusive sessions.

On a related note, those interested in Vulkan might like to read Nvidia's recent blog post concerning the Vulkan Developer Day it held earlier this week at its Silicon Valley HQ.

Back to the GDC 2016 and elsewhere in the official event blogs it is reported that development is heating up for VR projects. According to a survey of over 2,000 game developers, ahead of the GDC 2016, development of virtual reality (VR) titles has more than doubled among participating developers with 16 percent currently developing for VR.

Of all the competing VR platforms PC and mobile are the most popular. That might not be surprising, as PC is the most popular platform overall among the surveyed developers with 52 per cent of them currently working on a game for PC. However over a quarter of developers questioned aren't very positive about VR, thinking it will never be a long-term sustainable platform to develop for.

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!

Surprised to see Nvidia talking about Vulkan, given their penchant for propitiatory stuff and Vulkan's heritage i fully expected them to do a Cartman. :)

Just as I said before in the QOTW on VR. Even devs don't see it as worth working on for profit.
“However over a quarter of developers questioned aren't very positive about VR, thinking it will never be a long-term sustainable platform to develop for.” 16% of devs making something for it means niche, especially with current outlook for pricing and the rig you need to run this face-mask stuff. ;)

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gdc-reveals-results-of-2016-state-of-the-industry-survey-showing-expanded-vr-game-development-and-confidence-in-esports-as-a-sustainable-business-300206552.html
“In a separate, more conservative VR/AR install base question, 38 percent of respondents predicted that VR/AR hardware would be in 10 percent of U.S. households by 2020. 86 percent figure it'll happen by 2030, and roughly 9 percent figure it will never happen.”

IF it's 10% by 2020, it will be an afterthought for devs in most games, just to add more reasoning to my comment before ;) I'd rather see all that time devoted to making games MORE FUN or even as a last resort better looking. Far too much time spent on looks leaving us with 10hr games these days for $60. Bring back more games that keep me hooked for weeks or months for $40. Thank god RPG's are coming back big now, along with some great strat stuff. Give me more gameplay/story, and less glitz. I hope Vulkan (and even dx12) gives them more time to spend on the game itself (fun factor, length, story, SP experience etc) while less time is needed to optimize the crap out of getting the graphics to run a decent fps on most machines.

Does anyone know which will be the first ‘AAA’ game released to actually make use of DX12 or Vulkan?

Posted by DanceswithUnix - Thu 21 Jan 2016 15:31

Interesting. Phoronix are saying they hear March is when Vulkan will get released: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Vulkan-Dev-Day

Posted by Corky34 - Thu 21 Jan 2016 16:40

Posted by nobodyspecial - Sat 23 Jan 2016 09:41

Posted by nobodyspecial - Sat 23 Jan 2016 09:58

Posted by MrJim - Sat 23 Jan 2016 10:15

SEE NEWER »