ATI al Game Developers Conference

[Staff]

<br><blockquote><i>Markham, Ontario/ Munich, Germany - March 2, 2005 - At this year's premiere game development show, the Game Developers Conference (GDC), ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT) will have a range of activities supporting the development community. The ATI booth, technical talks and a mobile developer event will be highlights of this annual event, preparing developers for an exciting year ahead in which the industry is anticipating handheld gaming will gain significant traction, console transitions appear to be on the horizon and desktop performance is now a reality in notebooks.<p>

As the mobile gaming market emerges, ATI has positioned itself as a leader within the industry, delivering leading edge graphics to today's cell phones. To bring developers up to speed on the state of the industry, both in hardware and content development, ATI and QUALCOMM are holding "3D UNLEASHED Developers Day" on Sunday March, 6th.<p>

At booth #710, ATI will showcase graphics accelerators from a variety of product lines, including our IMAGEON(tm) series (mobile phones), RADEON® (desktop), MOBILITY(tm) RADEON® (notebook), FireGL(tm) and MOBILITY(tm) FireGL(tm) (Workstation). Also on the exhibit floor, ATI hosts theater style technical presentations from industry partners, such as Alias, AMD, Discreet, Garage Games, Lionhead, Luxology, Qualcomm, RTZen, Softimage, Sun and SuperScape. Held every 30 minutes, these presentations are a unique opportunity for attendees to learn more about how to maximize the powerful capabilities of ATI graphics.<p>

Throughout the week, engineers from ATI's 3D Application Research Group will be presenting a series of technical talks on some of the latest advancements in graphics technology. As advances in the graphics industry come faster and faster, these talks will get developers up to speed on the technologies researchers have been working on to facilitate compelling game content.<p>

* Advanced Visual Effects with Direct3D <p>

An in-depth look at the Direct3D technologies in DirectX 9 and applied to cutting-edge game graphics. After a review of the latest API improvements and shader models, how they can be used for a variety of special effects which illustrate their use in game content are discussed and demonstrated. In addition to illustrating the details of rendering advanced real-time visual effects, this tutorial covers a series of vendor-neutral optimizations that developers need to keep in mind when designing their engines and shaders.<p>

* Next Generation Rendering With OpenGL <p>

An in-depth look at the latest technologies in OpenGL, and how they can be applied to next generation game graphics. The tutorial includes detailed descriptions of the latest features of OpenGL 2.0 and the latest extensions, followed by several case-studies of new rendering effects that are enabled by these features. The tutorial also focuses on optimizing shaders for maximum interactive performance.<p>



* DirectX Graphics Performance - getting every bit you can. <p>
A cold and objective look at the performance aspects of DirectX games from the basic guidelines of what to do and why, though the all too often subtle interactions of programming techniques, and ending with a close look at a small handful of those special apps that either fail or achieve in a spectacular way. Most importantly you'll leave with a handful of recommendations that allow you to detect and cure the commonest failings of 90% of the cases that games developers meet.<p>

* Precomputed Radiance Transfer and Spherical Harmonic Lighting Techniques for Games <p>

Pre-computed Radiance Transfer (PRT) and Spherical Harmonic (SH) based lighting solutions have entered the mainstream of real-time graphics. This relatively new lighting technique offers many advantages to engine programmers in both performance and advanced lighting realism. Pre-sampled irradiance and irradiance gradients for non-distant, mid-range lighting will be discussed along with methods for using PRT with dynamic, deformable geometry. This presentation will also cover lighting algorithms that mix PRT with more traditional lighting techniques.<p>

* Bringing Hollywood to Real-time <p>
Artists face a variety of issues when designing art that pushes the limits of next generation hardware, as the market demands that games look more and more like films yet still render in real time. This talk looks at techniques for taking Hollywood style effects intended for film and recreating them on next generation graphics hardware.<p>

The talk will address issues faced by ATI's 3D Application Research Group's art team in the creation of the Ruby demos which were created in partnership with RhinoFX, a film and video post-production house. Topics discussed will include communication challenges between a film house and a real-time house, the production pipeline which evolved, and specific solutions for creating a cinematic look using graphics hardware.<p>

* Effects Breakdown - How'd They Do That? <p>
As graphics hardware becomes more powerful it has become increasingly difficult for programmers and artists to figure out just what to do with all of it. In this talk, the demo team from ATI describes a number of practical effects from past and future demos that take advantage of leading edge hardware.<p>

ATI's graphics technology can also be found at our partners booths and events, including Alias (Booth # 230), AMD (Booth #610), Discreet (Booth # 113) and Softimage (Booth# 413). For more details on ATI's activities at GDC, please visit http://www.ati.com</i></blockquote><p>