Posted on Friday, May 08 2009 @ 11:29 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Intel published a six-page long PDF interview with Tom Forsyth, the software and hardware architect of Larrabee. You can read it
over here.
Q: What is Larrabee’s biggest benefit to
game developers?
The primary focus used to be making more realistic
graphics. Now as we get there, we see that realism is
somewhat overrated. Films don’t have real lighting—it’s
faked like crazy. Real physics aren’t that fun—if I fall 12
feet, I break my leg. Real AI will headshot you every time.
So you want the game to look intelligent and realistic while
still having fun beating it. We need to enable as much
realism as the developers want, then allow them the fine
control to step sideways. An example of that in graphics
is colorizing and brightening, such as in the TV show
Pushing Daisies, where scenes are filled with pastels, or
have huge contrast, or their hue changes to emphasize a
mood. The colors are completely unrealistic and yet we not
only accept them, they tell us things without conscious
input. And it all relies on exquisitely fine control over the
rendering. That is what Larrabee will provide to developers:
new techniques for enhancing the visceral feel of a game.
