For anyone still working on their SIGGRAPH 2010 schedule, SIGGRAPH now has an online scheduler available. They are also promising an iPhone app, but this has not yet materialized. Most courses (sadly, only one of mine) now have detailed schedules. These reveal some more detail about two of the most interesting courses for game and real-time rendering developers:

Advances in Real-Time Rendering in 3D Graphics and Games

The first half, Advances in Real-Time Rendering in 3D Graphics and Games I (Wednesday, 28 July, 9:00 AM – 12:15 PM, Room 515 AB) starts with a short introduction by Natalya Tatarchuk (Bungie), and continues with four 45 to 50-minute talks:

• Rendering techniques in Toy Story 3, by John Ownby, Christopher Hall and Robert Hall (Disney).
• A Real-Time Radiosity Architecture for Video Games, by Per Einarsson (DICE) and Sam Martin (Geomerics)
• Real-Time Order Independent Transparency and Indirect Illumination using Direct3D 11, by Jason Yang and Jay McKee (AMD)
• CryENGINE 3: Reaching the Speed of Light, by Anton Kaplayan (Crytek)

The second half, Advances in Real-Time Rendering in 3D Graphics and Games II (Wednesday, 28 July, 2:00 PM – 5:15 PM, Room 515 AB) continues with five more talks (these are more variable in length, ranging from 25 to 50 minutes):

• Sample Distribution Shadow Maps, by Andrew Lauritzen (Intel)
• Adaptive Volumetric Shadow Maps, by Marco Salvi (Intel)
• Uncharted 2: Character Lighting and Shading, by John Hable (Naughty Dog)
• Destruction Masking in Frostbite 2 using Volume Distance Fields, by Robert Kihl (DICE)
• Water Flow in Portal 2, by Alex Vlachos (Valve)

And concludes with a short panel (Open Challenges for Rendering in Games and Future Directions) and Q&A session by all the course speakers.

Beyond Programmable Shading

The first half,  Beyond Programmable Shading I (Thursday, 29 July, 9:00 AM – 12:15 PM, Room 515 AB) includes seven 20-30 minute talks:

• Looking Back, Looking Forward, Why and How is Interactive Rendering Changing, by Mike Houston (AMD)
• Five Major Challenges in Interactive Rendering, by Johan Andersson (DICE)
• Running Code at a Teraflop: How a GPU Shader Core Works, by Kayvon Fatahalian (Stanford)
• Parallel Programming for Real-Time Graphics, by Aaron Lefohn (Intel)
• DirectCompute Use in Real-Time Rendering Products, by Chas. Boyd (Microsoft)
• Surveying Real-Time Beyond Programmable Shading Rendering Algorithms, by David Luebke (NVIDIA)
• Bending the Graphics Pipeline, by Johan Andersson (DICE)

The second half, Beyond Programmable Shading II (Thursday, 29 July, 2:00 PM – 5:15 PM, Room 515 AB) starts with a short “re-introduction” by Aaron Lefohn (Intel) continues with five 20-35 minute talks:

• Keeping Many Cores Busy: Scheduling the Graphics Pipeline, by Jonathan Ragan-Kelley (MIT)
• Evolving the Direct3D Pipeline for Real-Time Micropolygon Rendering, by Kayvon Fatahalian (Stanford)
• Decoupled Sampling for Real-Time Graphics Pipelines, by Jonathan Ragan-Kelley (MIT)
• Deferred Rendering for Current and Future Rendering Pipelines, by Andrew Lauritzen (Intel)
• PantaRay: A Case Study in GPU Ray-Tracing for Movies, by Luca Fascione (Weta) and Jacopo Pantaleoni (NVIDIA)

and closes with a 15-minute wrapup (What’s Next for Interactive Rendering Research?) by Mike Houston (AMD) followed by a 45-minute panel (What Role Will Fixed-Function Hardware Play in Future Graphics Architectures?) by all the course speakers Mike Houston, Kayvon Fatahalian, and Johan Andersson, joined by Steve Molnar (NVIDIA) and David Blythe (Intel) (thanks to Aaron Lefohn for the update).

Both of these courses look extremely strong, and I recommend them to any SIGGRAPH attendee interested in real-time rendering (I definitely plan to attend them!)

Four presentations by DICE is an unusually large number for a single game developer, but that isn’t the whole story; they are actually doing two additional presentations in the Stylized Rendering in Games course, for a total of six!