Still at Siggraph

I’m still at Siggraph… getting ready to leave, though. I met up with Scott Owen from the conference advisory group and he told me that the expo floor is 10% larger this year, with attendance up 15%. Nice! The LA Convention Center is so large though, that it just seemed like there were fewer people than last year.
Today, the last day of the conference, there are two game talks going on. I just attended the first, which emphasized next-generation visuals. SSX3, Half-Life2, NFS:Underground2, and the Onimusha3 cinematic were highlighted. Presenters emphasized how nervous they are about the work that the next generation machines will take. Real-time visual editing tools should help that somewhat; a comparison was made to how long it would take to do 20 different takes on an NFS:U lighting scheme if they had to render each scene like they used to have to do at ILM. Yikers.
The next game session is a panel called “How will you feed the next generation of hardware?” I don’t imagine that keeping it fed will be much of a problem… the constraints within which artists work are always what define the art. Where those boundaries are will affect what can be produced, most certainly. But I’m sure it will take just one of two product cycles to bump up against those boundaries and start finding them frustrating, just as has happened on all the previous consoles. No surprises there, really.
After that session I’m heading for the airport. Yay!


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