Hi everyone!
A quick update to plug a couple of events that have invited yours truly for a talk. Yes I know, it’s been about two years since my last real talk. I haven’t even been able to visit any conferences this year. I’m showing severe withdrawal symptoms and I’m ecstatic to be able to spend a couple of days in such fine company again. So check out:
- Crib Game Days, January 23: Genk, Belgium
- FITC Amsterdam, February 23/24: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
While different in size, both events have a great line-up, so be sure not to miss out on them! :)
The talk
The title of my talk will be “A Peek at the Future of 3D on the Web“. It will draw from having been quite intimate with its past and my experience with WebGL and its extensions. A while ago, I took it upon myself to take my playground DirectX engine Helix and create a JavaScript/WebGL version. Since the original Helix is DX11-based and relies on quite a few ‘modern things’, I wasn’t too worried about cross-platform functionality. If it ran well enough on both my desktop and laptop – both relatively capable machines – it’s all good. I might fix everything up and make it work “everywhere” if I have the time at some point, but that’s beside the point right now :) The Helix port will function as a sort of leitmotif throughout the presentation.
So obviously, the talk won’t be about how to build a WebGL game that runs reliably on all platforms; quite the contrary. Of course, there will be segments that show how to improve your rendering today, which I’ve found oddly lacking in existing projects/engines. I wouldn’t want you to go home without being able to apply anything directly, now would I? However, the main focus will be on what the future brings: either currently available through extensions (and hence might only work on a select amount of devices) or what’s being proposed but currently only exists in f.e. OpenGL/DirectX.
Apart from all that…
I’ve been taking quite a long time off from payed work to focus on learning new things: brushing up on my JavaScript/WebGL, checking out Outracks’ UNO & Fuse Tools (looking promising, I might be showing some of this during the talk as well), some Unity (always a pleasure), and a brief foray into Python territory. Yes, watch me embellish my LinkedIn profile so headhunters can try and hire me for completely unrelated things! I’ve even started working on music again (gasp!), if you’re into post-rock/metal-ish sort of things ;)
Not sure if it counts as a sabbatical, but getting back to actual work (I gotsta get paid!) with new knowledge under my belt definitely feels gratifying. And hopefully, it will also lead to more blog posts in which I can actually show running examples ;)
Signing out!
– D
