NVIDIA - PC gaming to hit new high with Windows Vista.
Michael Johnson: At the GDC 2006 in San Jose, California, it’;s all about the game. And when it comes to gaming it’;s all about the graphics. And when it comes to graphics it’;s all about NVIDIA. I’;m Michael Johnson coming up a bit later we’;ll speak with a few of the developers about their latest work, but first let’;s hear from Bill Rehbock, Director of Publisher Relations and Consumer Awareness at NVIDIA. So we’;re here at the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, and there’;s a lot of buzz surrounding NVIDIA and the new GPUs. Tell us a little bit about that.
Bill Rehbock: Well some of the things that we’;re showing here at the Game Developers Conference are many of our third-party content partners showing their new titles running on our new quad SLI GPU setup for PCs, we’;re showing games running at resolutions of 2560x1600 which is over four mega pixels of resolution being able to be displayed on some of these Dell 30 inch displays that we have in our booth. To be able to drive that many pixels requires not only one very good performing GPU but as many as four GPUs depending on the complexity of the scene. So with many of our hardware partners such as Dell and others that are now introducing quad SLI setups, you wind up with two graphics cards in your system, each with two GPUs. And that has the ability to pump out those four mega pixels of content at frame rates of 60 frames per second. So it’;s just unheard of amounts of data that really have the ability to suspend belief, make characters far far more real than they ever have been, make environments look real.
Michael Johnson: So what kind of announcements are you making here at the show?
Bill Rehbock: So one of the most significant announcements that were made at the show is that we’;re showing for the first time Havoc, which is one of the couple companies that does physics libraries to make all of the motion of objects, and behavior of objects, and characters and games feel far more real. So when rock and rubble or glass falls or crashes and things like that, it makes it feel more real from a consumer standpoint, and it also does a much better job at enhancing game play.
Michael Johnson: Tell me a little bit more about how NVIDIA is going to be working with developers and how they work with them now.
Bill Rehbock: After we have helped developers make their games look good, and put in these fantastic features that help their game sell more and be more attractive to a wider audience, in addition to that we also a “the Way it’;s Meant to be Played” program. And “the Way it’;s meant to be played” is all about promoting NVIDIA partner content within the PC gaming ecosystem as well as in the PC application environment now. And “the Way it’;s Meant to be Played” has been deployed at retail, e-tail, and various magazine publications where we attract an audience to these features within games so that people are aware not only that the game looks good, why it looks good, and also educate them to make sure that they have the correct hardware to play the games on.
Michael Johnson: From a developer’;s point of view, what’;s significant about working in Windows Vista?
Bill Rehbock: So Windows Vista will be coming out in early 2007, and it is probably the most significant thing ever to happen to the PC, especially as a gaming platform. The developer now can better count on a GPU being present in the PC, again that takes you to a more standardized platform where you can count on what the hardware looks like and the behavior of the hardware will be, NVIDIA has more Vista-ready graphics cards and GPUs than anybody else, any other manufacturer right now, so we’;re positioned really well to support Vista, as all of these what Microsoft is referring to as consumer technology previews are being released. It is totally going to change the face of the PC, both from a gaming standpoint as well as what even the desktop looks like.
Michael Johnson: Ok. Well it’;s been great talking with you in the pod cast today, Bill. Bill Rehbock who is the Director of Developer Relations and Consumer Awareness for NVIDIA. And my awareness has certainly been opened up and it’;s really fascinating world and thanks for explaining it for us.
Bill Rehbock: Thank you so much.
Michael Johnson: I’;m here with Michael Legg as the president of Petroglyph Games. And welcome to the pod cast.
Michael Legg: Well thank you very much man, I’;m totally happy to be here.
Michael Johnson: Now tell me a little bit about Petroglyph, a little bit about the history of the company and what you’;re doing here at GDC.
Michael Legg: Well Petroglyph, we’;re a company out in Las Vegas, and we’;ve been there for a very long time, our group, and we are- we make real-time strategy games, and we’;ve just released Star Wars: Empire at War, on the PC, with Lucas Arts. And that’;s doing extremely well; we’;re totally excited about that, having a blast working with those guys. And our history lies in real-time strategy games, all the way back from Dune 2. And Joe Bostick, he’;s one of our founders, he’;s my partner, along with Steve Tall [sp], Joe and Brat Sperry [sp] created Dune 2, the first PC RTS. We’;ve worked on the Command and Conquer games, the Red Alert, we did many many games for Westwood Studios before we decided to start a new company in Las Vegas, and Steve Tall, our other founder, he worked for the Bitmap [sp] Brothers, and we have two new real-time strategy games in development right now with our publishers. NVIDIA just came to us, approached us, and then just asked us if we needed any help with things, and if there was any kind of feedback they could give us and then so we just started talking with them, and we just ended up having a lot of help and a lot of support, whenever we had a question we could call or send off an email, and we’;d get instant results. So it was just a great relationship that was built up as we were developing the project.
Michael Johnson: I’;m here with Joshua Glazier [sp] who is the co-found and CTO of Naked Sky Entertainment. Welcome to the pod cast.
Joshua Glazier: Thanks, good to be here.
Michael Johnson: So tell me a little bit about your company and what you’;re doing here at GDC.
Joshua Glazier: Ok. Naked Sky Entertainment is working on next generation video games that are completely driven by physics. So we’;re here showing off our game Robo Blitz, which is going to be coming out on Xbox Live Arcade in the next few months and then the PC shortly after. What’;s special about it is that it uses Unreal Engine 3, and it’;s completely driven by physics. There’;s not a single frame of hand animation.
Michael Johnson: So tell me a little bit about what you’;ll be able to do with Windows Vista, and what kind of exciting features are working with at- that would be good for your company.
Joshua Glazier: Oh Vista has a lot of great features coming up. One of them that we’;re excited about is installers booting in the game, so you just slip the disc in and you get a total console-like experience, where don’;t have to wait forever to get to the action. And then of course there are the controller drivers that are going to be built in, so you don’;t have to worry about searching for drivers for your controller, and of course DirectX 10 has a lot of graphics stuff that we can’;t wait to start looking into.
Michael Johnson: Now you have a relationship with NVIDIA. Tell me a little bit about that.
Joshua Glazier: Oh, well we’;ve been partnered up with NVIDIA for as long as we remember. We love their cards, and they’;re really supportive of what we are doing. They’;re really out there helping us as a game developer, optimize our code when we need it, get our supplies when we need them, showing us off at GDC, and they’;re great.
Michael Johnson: And how do you think- you were talking a little bit before about physics and why that’;s a really big part of what you do. Tell me a little bit more about physics and how that’;s going to change the gaming experience for the consumer.
Joshua Glazier: So I’;ll give you an example from our game. In our game there’;s a door that you have to open up, that’;s attached to a platform, and they’;re connected by a pulley, so you put weight on a platform, and it opens the door. A lot of games have situations like that before physics, but it’;s basically a one shot deal. You put something on the platform, the door opens, but because we have physics, it’;s totally realistic, where you have to get the right amount of weight on that platform. So you can pick things up and move them on the platform, or you can put almost the right amount of weight on the platform, but let’;s say you don’;t have enough weight, then you could go over to the door and actually start lifting it up with your arms. The gamers can use their imaginations and whatever they think is going to work is going to work even if we didn’;t have to plan for it.
Michael Johnson: That sounds really fascinating, like this sounds like it’;s going to open up a whole new door for a gaming period, because- I mean there’;s been some strategy games before real-time everyone’;s like missed there’;s others where we’;ve had to do a lot of these things but this sounds like it’;s taking it to a whole other level.
Joshua Glazier: Yeah, I mean so many times people have been frustrated by games because they want to just knock the door down. Why doesn’;t it work? Well the designers didn’;t think of that. Well in our games it’;s just going to work and that’;s thanks to real-time physics.
Michael Johnson: Tell me a little bit about some of the projects that you’;re working for on the PC and what you’;re presenting here at the show.
Joshua Glazier: Well we’;re showing Robo Blitz, which is coming out on Xbox Live Arcade in a few months and on the PC shortly after. And it’;s entirely less than 50 megabytes which means that it’;s perfect for a downloadable distribution.
Michael Johnson: So if people want to find out a little bit more about the games that Naked Sky is producing, about Naked Sky, where can they go?
Joshua Glazier: Well to check out Robo Blitz, they should go to www.roboblitz.com, or if they want more information about Naked Sky they could check out nakedsky.com.
Michael Johnson: Ok. Joshua Glazier, CTO and co-founder of Naked Sky Entertainment, it’;s been great having you on the pod cast.
Joshua Glazier: Thanks, it’;s good to be here.
Michael Johnson: Up next, the gang from Offset Software?? Sam McGraph, Trevor Stringer, and Rod Green .
Sam McGraph: I’;m Sam, we’;re debuting some new technology called the Offset Engine. And essentially it’;s a platform for next generation games that was built from the ground-up to support next-gen hardware. And we’;ve been developing this technology for about two years. The history behind the company is kind of interesting because it was just me and two other guys in an apartment at first, and we were just hacking away at this for a year or so, and after that point we released a couple of videos on the net debuting some of that technology, and got some people really excited about it, and it’;s gotten NVIDIA excited about it so we’;ve been just going from there and expanding the company.
Michael Johnson: Tell me a little bit more about your relationship with NVIDIA. Is it- how important is it to have a partner: is it a valuable thing to have?
Sam McGraph: Absolutely. NVIDIA has been helpful to us especially in the early days of this project. As I said it was just me and two other guys in an apartment, Trevor being one of them. And so NVIDIA very early on took an interest in what we were doing and we got sent some new hardware from them, from a great guy in Developer Relations called Keith Gelowski [sp], and he sent us some hardware, then just as we continued to develop the technology, and more and more people got interested in it and NVIDIA was right there alongside us, helping us out with all the latest tech, making sure we were always up to date and made sure that we could move forward so, I mean, NVIDIA cards have been our primary development platform during the development of the engine, and they’;re a great partner, we love working with them.
Michael Johnson: Talk about the Dragon Wings.
[Michael and Sam laugh]
Michael Johnson: I’;ve heard about the Dragon Wings.
[Michael and Sam laugh]
Sam McGraph: Ok well, the Dragon Wings are- everyone seems to pretty excited about that, it’;s using a couple of techniques that we used to actually shade the material on that, one of them being the simulation of sub-surfaces scattering, in addition to transmission through the wings. So basically it gets us an incredibly realistic look to the dragon wings, very similar to a thin membrane look that you see on creatures in the real world.
Michael Johnson: Like real dragons.
Sam McGraph: Of course, like real dragons. Exactly. We were able to do that with the Offset Engine, we’;re able to create these materials, artists can create these materials very easily, we don’;t need programmers to do it which is the great thing and one of the reasons why it looks so good is because the artists themselves are able to now create these materials without needing a programmer to help them and of course the artists are the ones who have the real vision for this stuff. So they could make this stuff look great.
Michael Johnson: So if people want to find games that have been generated by Offset or things, where can they go for more information and find out a little bit more, like some names- some names that people should watch out for?
Sam McGraph: Basically you just head to projectoffset.com, we’;ve got a website set up there where you can read up all about the game and you can see all the great art content everyone’;s created [?] for. There are great demos and we should have the dragon up pretty soon so you get to check out what everyone saw at the GDC.
Michael Johnson: I’;m here with Chris Taylor who is the CEO of Gas Powered Games, welcome to the pod cast.
Chris Taylor: Thank you, thank you.
Michael Johnson: Tell me a little bit about Gas Powered Games and what you’;re doing here at GDC.
Chris Taylor: Gas Powered Games was founded in May of 98, so this is our 8th year as an independent game developer. We produced Dungeon Siege, and recently Dungeon Siege 2; we’;ve got Supreme Commander coming out early next year. Right now, of course, Supreme Commander’;s our big title that we’;ve announced, we’;ve also got the expansion pack coming for Dungeon Siege 2, we’;ve got some unannounced titles in development, but we’;ve also got Dungeon Siege coming out on the PSP we’;re working with 2K and another developer on the PSP version of Dungeon Siege. Very excited about that project.
Michael Johnson: And tell me a little bit about DirectX, about working with DirectX 10, or DX 10.
Chris Taylor: Every time we sit down with Microsoft, they move the ball down the field in smarter, more innovative ways; it’;s making our graphics challenges frankly just melt away. We don’;t spend much time anymore talking about APIs and rendering technologies, we spend more time today talking about game play, and the way we use the technology to make our artistic vision come alive, which is a huge change from say five or six years ago where it was like the challenge was just getting the hardware to do what you wanted and do it in a way that was effective and economical to game development.
Michael Johnson: Tell me a little bit about your relationship with NVIDIA and how that works.
Chris Taylor: The key thing I would say with NVIDIA is the relationship that we have with the people at NVIDIA. Guys like Rex who we work with, who treat us great, get us everything we need, hook us up with the right people, that’;s really the key. The technology’;s obviously world-class, but the fact is if it wasn’;t for the people we really wouldn’;t have the great relationship that we have today with NVIDIA.
Michael Johnson: So Chris, if people want to find out a little bit more about Gas Powered Games and the kinds of things that you’;re doing, where can they go?
Chris Taylor: Well of course they could go up to our website, at www.gaspowered.com and what’;s even better, really, if you want to stay really tight with what we’;re doing is to sign up for our newsletter, that goes out occasionally with all the latest and greatest that’;s going on at GPG.
Michael Johnson: Well it’;s been great having you on the podcast Chris, and keep on, keep it on.
Chris Taylor: Thank you very much, appreciate it.