This year’s GDC was awesome. Some amazing presentations and again I could chat with super-smart and inspiring people. Be sure to check out “Advanced Techniques and Optimization of HDR Color Pipelines”, “Optimizing the Graphics Pipeline with Compute” and “Photogrammetry and Star Wars Battlefront” . Growing list of presentations:

Programming Track

• “Developing The Northlight Engine: Lessons Learned” – Ville Timonen (Remedy Entertainment)
• “Technical Introduction to the Stingray Game Engine” – Niklas Frykholm (Autodesk)
• “Object Space Rendering in DirectX 12” – Dan Baker (Oxide Games)
• “Optimizing the Graphics Pipeline with Compute” – Graham Wihlidal (Frostbite)
• “Taming the Jaguar” – Andreas Fredriksson (Insomniac Games)
• “Advanced VR Rendering Performance” – Alex Vlachos (Valve)
• “Real-time BC6H Compression on GPU” – Krzysztof Narkowicz (Flying Wild Hog)
• “TLDR Statistics for Game Devs. The math you need to win arguments” – Elan Ruskin (Insomniac Games)
• “Temporal Reprojection Anti-Aliasing in INSIDE” –
  Lasse Jon Fuglsang Pedersen (Playdead)
• “Stable Specular Hightlights” (pdf with notes, large pptx with videos) – Anton S. Kaplanyan (NVIDIA)
• “Fixed Point Iteration – A Simple, Efficient and Useful Solver” – Huw Bowles (Studio Gobo)
• “An Introduction to SPIR-V” – Neil Henning
• “An Excursion in Temporal Supersampling” – Marco Salvi (NVIDIA)
• “Improving Geometry Culling for ‘Deus Ex: Mankind Divided'” – Nicolas Trudel (Eidos-Montréal)
• “Fast, Flexible, Physically-Based Volumetric Light Scattering” – Nathan Hoobler (NVIDIA)
• “Building Paragon in Unreal Engine 4” – Benn Gallagher, Martin Mittring (Epic Games)
• “More Explosions, More Chaos, and Definitely More Blowing Stuff Up: Optimizations and New DirectX Features in ‘Just Cause 3′” – Emil Persson (Avalanche Studios), Antoine Cohade (Intel)
• “DirectX 12 Advancements” (pdf, video) – Max McMullen (Microsoft)
• “PowerVR Graphics – Latest Developments and Future Plans” – Kristof Beets (Imagination Technologies)
• “Ray Tracing on the Wizard GPU” – Luke Peterson, Tobias Hector (Imagination Technologies)
• “Real-Time Ray Tracing Rechniques for Developers” – James Rumble (Imagination Technologies)
• “Interactive Light Mapping with PowerVR Ray Tracing” – Jens Fursund, Justin DeCell (Imagination Technologies)
• “Advanced Topics for PowerVR Ray Tracing” – Gareth Morgan, Luke Peterson (Imagination Technologies)
• “Efficient Rendering with Vulkan on PowerVR” – Ashley Smith, Tobias Hector (Imagination Technologies)
• “Migrating to Vulkan with the New PowerVR Graphics Framework” – Paul Sobek, Tobias Hector (Imagination Technologies)
• “Practical DirectX 12 – Programming Model and Hardware Capabilities” – Gareth Thomas (AMD), Alex Dunn (NVIDIA)
• “Vulkan Fast Paths” – Graham Sellers, Timothy Lottes, Matthäus Chajdas (AMD)
• “Let Your Game Shine – Optimizing DirectX 12 and Vulkan Performance with AMD CodeXL” – Doron Ofek (AMD)
• “Right on Queue: Advanced DirectX 12 Programming” – Stephan Hodes (AMD), Dave Oldcorn (AMD), Dan Baker (Oxide)
• “D3D12 & Vulkan: Lessons Learned” – Matthaeus Chajdas (AMD)
• “Advanced Techniques and Optimization of HDR Color Pipelines” – Timothy Lottes (AMD)
• “LiquidVR™ Today and Tomorrow” – Guennadi Riguer (AMD)
• “Multiplatform GPU Ray-Tracing Solutions With FireRender and FireRays” – Takahiro Harada, Dmitry Kozlov (AMD)
• “GPUOpen – Unlocking Game Development with Open Source” – Nicolas Thibieroz (AMD), Jason Stewart (AMD), Dmitry Kozlov (AMD), Doron Ofek (AMD), Jean-Normand Bucci (Eidos Montreal)
• “Rendering ‘Hitman’ with DirectX 12” – Jonas Meyer (IO Interactive)
• “Low Complexity, High Fidelity – INSIDE Rendering” (pdf, huge pptx with videos) – Mikkel Gjoel, Mikkel Svendsen “Playdead”
• “High-performance, Low-Overhead Rendering with OpenGL and Vulkan” – Mathias Schott, Lars Bishop (NVIDIA)
• “Advanced Rendering with DirectX 11 and DirectX 12” – Holger Gruen (NVIDIA)
• “Advanced Geometrically Correct Shadows for Modern Game Engines” – Jon Story (NVIDIA)
• “Advanced Ambient Occlusion Methods for Modern Games” – Andrei Tatarinov, Alexey Panteleev (NVIDIA)
• “Shader Programming: What’s Next?” – Tim Foley (NVIDIA)

Math for Game Programmers

• Math For Game Programmers website
• “Math for Game Programmers: Building A Better Jump” – (pptx, pdf) Kyle Pittman (Minor Key Games)
• “Math for Game Programmers: Juicing Your Cameras With Math” (pptx, pdf) – Squirrel Eiserloh (SMU Guildhall)
• “Math for Game Programmers: Random Tidbits: Use Chance to Enhance Fun!” – Dr. Cat (Dragon’s Eye Productions)
• “Math for Game Programmers: Implicit Function Raytracing” – Chris Birke (Secant Astronomy)
• “Math for Game Programmers: Indexing and Iterating Design Space Permutations” – Nathan Sturtevant (University of Denver / NS Software)
• “Math for Game Programmers: Voxel Surfing” (large pptx, pdf) – Michael Austin (Hidden Path Entertainment)
• “Math for Game Programmers: Differential Coordinates and Laplacians” – Nicholas Vining (Gaslamp Games)
• “Math for Game Programmers: Fighting With Spherical Coordinates For Military Training” – Simon Strange (Pipeworks)
• “Math for Game Programmers: Rotational Joint Limits in Quaternion Space” – Gino Van den Bergen (Dtecta)

Visual Arts Track

• “Digital Humans: Crossing the Uncanny Valley in Unreal Engine 4” (pptx, video)- (Epic Games)
• “A Real-Time Rendered Future” – (Epic Games)
• “Visual Effects Roundtable” – Drew Skillman (Google)
• “Photogrammetry and Star Wars Battlefront” – Kenneth Brown, Andrew Hamilton (DICE)
• “End-to-End Approach to Physically Based Rendering” – Wes McDermott (Allegorithmic), Sam Bugden (Geomerics)
• “Lighting the City of Glass – Rendering ‘Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst'” – Fabien Christin (EA DICE)
• “Substance in Rainbow Six: Siege” – Lucas Granito (Ubisoft Montreal)
• “Technical Art Culture of ‘Uncharted 4′” – Andrew Maximov (Naughty Dog)
• “IK Rig: Procedural Pose Animation” (website, huge pptx)- Alexander Bereznyak (Ubisoft)

Production Track

• “Great Management of Technical Leads” – Mike Acton (Insomniac Games)
• “The Game Outcomes Project: How Teamwork, Leadership and Culture Drive Results” – Paul Tozour (Mothership Entertainment)
• “Lead the Way! A Practical Guide to Team Leadership” – Oliver Franzke (Double Fine Productions)
• “Give life to your 3D art with MDL and NVIDIA Iray in Substance Painter” – Manuel Kraemer (NVIDIA)
• “Rendering Faster and Better with NVIDIA GameWorks VR in UE4” – Cem Cebenoyan (NVIDIA)
• “Vulkan and NVIDIA The Essentials” – Tristan Lorach (NVIDIA)
• “Android TV Gaming: Designing (and Programming) for Success on Marshmallow” – Lars Bishop (NVIDIA)

Design Track

• “Level Design Workshop: Level Design in Impossible Geometry” – William Chyr (Independent)
• “Gods and Dumps: Attribute Tuning in Pillars of Eternity” – Josh Sawyer (Obsidian Entertainment)
• “Forging The River in “The Flame in The Flood” – Damian Isla (The Molasses Flood)
• “‘Fallout 4’s’ Modular Level Design” – Joel Burgess, Nathan Purkeypile (Bethesda Game Studios)
• “Idle Chatter: What We Can Learn From Self-Playing Games” – Anthony Pecorella (Kongregate)
• “The Future of Virtual Reality: Luminary Panel Discussion” – (Epic Games)
• “The Gamer’s Brain, Part 2: UX of Onboarding and Player Engagement” – Celia Hodent (Epic Games)

Game VR/AR Track

• “Forty Predictions for VR/AR through 2025” – Jesse Schell (Schell Games)
• “Fast and Flexible: Technical Art and Rendering For The Unknown” – James Answer (Sony London Studio)

Business Track

• “Game Developers Town Hall” – (Epic Games)
• “State of Unreal: Epic Games Opening Session” – Tim Sweeney (Epic Games)
• “Streaming Games from the Cloud with GeForce NOW” – Phil Eisler (NVIDIA)

AI Summit

• “AI For Generated Worlds” – Damian Isla (The Molasses Flood)

Game Narrative Sumit

• “Choice, Consequence and Complicity” – Alexis Kennedy (Failbetter Games)
• “Dynamic Stories for Dynamic Games: Six Ways to Give Each Player a Unique Narrative” – Richard Rouse III (Paranoid Productions)
• “What If: The Church in The Darkness” – Richard Rouse III (Paranoid Productions)

Independent Games Summit

• “Tracery generating text, graphics, and more!” – Kate Compton (Independent)
• “Making Your Own Tools & Hidden Benefits” – Omar Cornut (Lizardcube)

Presentation Coverage

• “Motion Matching and The Road to Next-Gen Animation” – Simon Clavet (Ubisoft Montreal)
• “DirectX 12 Advancements” – Max McMullen (Microsoft)
• “Practical DirectX 12 – Programming Model and Hardware Capabilities” – Gareth Thomas (AMD), Alex Dunn (NVIDIA)
• “Texturing Uncharted 4: a matter of Substance” – Brad Smith (Naughty Dog), Sebastien Deguy (ALLEGORITHMIC), Rogelio Olguin (Naughty Dog)
• “Rendering ‘Hitman’ with DirectX 12” – Jonas Meyer (IO Interactive)
• “Behind the Scenes of Cinematic Dialogues in ‘The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt'” – Piotr Tomsiński (CD Projekt Red)
• “Engines of Play: How Player Motivation Changes Over Time” – Jason VandenBerghe (Ubisoft)
• “Motion Matching and The Road to Next-Gen Animation” – Simon Clavet (Ubisoft Montreal)

Khronos Session

• Khronos Session – Vulkan part 1
• Khronos Session – Vulkan part 2
• Khronos Session – WebGL + glTF

GDC Vault

• GDC Vault