The story of the 3D engine – by the people who write them

The Guardian takes a look deep into 3D gaming and talks to Tim Sweeney to figure out what makes 3D gaming engines tick, and what needs to happen next to keep them current.

Sweeney reckons it’s a bit of both: “Game development is at the cutting edge in many disciplines. The physics in modern games includes rigid body dynamics and fluid simulation algorithms that are often more advanced than the approaches described in research papers. Over the past 15 years, games have caught up with 40 years’ of graphics research and are now leading the charge in some domains, such as practical lighting and shadowing techniques.

“In other areas, we’re still stuck in the Stone Age due to ingrained technologies. The C++ programming language, used in all modern games, was hastily conceived in the 1980s as an extension to the 1970s C programming language. Many of the problems that plague computers today – security vulnerabilities, viruses, and so on, can be traced to problems in this language.”

via The hidden story of the 3D engine – by the people who write them | Technology | guardian.co.uk.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a visualization scientist working for a federal research lab, aiding researchers to discover the insights buried within their terabyte datasets generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. He also runs VizWorld.com .