#some research on parallel opengl

After finishing the basic classes for an ingame-GUI-system, I started looking at how I want to multi-thread my program. In general with older OpenGL specifications, it is not easily possible to parallelise the drawing process, but there are certain things, that can be done.
The OpenGL context is bound to a single thread, so the context is inaccessible for other threads, but it is possible to access data at the same time, if for example VBO-data is mapped, this data can be accessed from other threads (useful for optimising CPU-side skinning). Another possibility is to create another context and let the contexts share ressources.
Anyway in the end the best thing is to simply have a drawing thread and handle all the other stuff (like physics, networking etc.) in other threads, so the drawing thread is simply drawing the last state, while the other threads are calculating the next state of the game.

#Parallel OpenGL FAQ
#Intel: Designing the Framework of a Parallel Game Engine

#some research on quadtrees

I just did some research on QuadTrees, because I am thinking about using them for an efficient in-game event system, that would be suitable for big MMOs to be able to process the vast amount of events on the server-side.

The most interesting advanced QuadTree implementation I came across is a so called Skip-QuadTree, which has several advantages, but do the reading yourself if you are interested:

#Skip-QuadTree publication
#Presentation of the same group
#Another paper dealing with quadtree and more
#Presentation of quadtree utilized in distribution system

#some review of skyrim and some research on water

I am wasn't really posting anything. Right now I am focusing on finishing the coursework for this semester, where some informations and git repositories are coming up.

Anyway in my spare time I started playing Skyrim.

Skyrim is brilliant!

Gameplaywise it's still the same, but if the gameplay is fine why do big changes. For me as a hopefully soon to be graphics programmer some of the graphics are pretty impressive.

First of the general graphics are good. As far as I know they were sticking to DX9, which is quite interesting. They did an awesome job on the terrain engine, which has great viewing range and great look. 

The nicest details although in my opinion are the water effects:

1. Water dropping from the ceiling

2. Flowing rivers (although not as nice as the FlowMaps presented by Valve at SIGGRAPH)

3. Waterfalls, White-Water-Effects

All this supports the natural look of skyrim and underlines the great work they did on the detailed world.

So there is loads of material to get an impression of Skyrim effects on the internet, but to save you some time, here are some links on flow maps. 

#The original valve presentation

#and a really good in depth article about it

#some research on pathfinding

The first keyword that comes to mind thinking about pathfinding, is the A* algorithm. The A* is a fast node based approach to compute the shortest way from start to finish over a bunch of nodes, because it's a geometrical simplified approach it's fast as well. 

Also it's scalable:

More nodes, better results, weak performance...

Less nodes, bad results, fast performance... 

In this case bad results mean for example unnecessary edges in the path. Also in general the computed way looks quite unnatural, so to use smooth algorithms is quite common or algorithm to generate curves instead of sharp edges.

To get a better insight I found following useful references:

#Gamasutra Feature about more realistic Pathfinding

#Awesome Stanford Course/Tutorial on Pathfinding in general

#For optimisation of a pathfinder - informations on cache coherence