Shaders and more

I sat in on the Core Techniques in Shaders tutorial during the lecture on lighting. It appears they are running a little late on the lectures in that tutorial. The slides for the entire Core Techniques tutorial will be online at CoreTechniques.info, so if you're interested in getting code, slides, or more information on the tutorial, then venture there. Dedicating a site to your tutorial or lecture isn't a bad idea. More people should do it.

Regarding the lighting lecture, it was a discussion about a technique to model light sources, simulate materials/BDRF's, compute light through poly's, and calculate diffuse shadows. From a style perspective, it's typical of a programming lecture: chock full of data and substance, but dry on style and presentation. Also - what's up with no running example to tie the presented technique to a visual?

A few more happenings over lunch:

• I caught an advertisement for Gamasutra.com's redesign. From the blurred redesign sample it looks like they're going to model more after GameDev.net. Fancy that.
  
• Intel has a gaming lounge doubling as an Intel technology advertisement booth on the 3rd floor. It's nothing out of the ordinary for gaming lounges, but they do have a cool "flight motion simulator" called DreamFlyer that's being demoed with Microsoft Flight Simulator X. It's a neat platform and an innovative design (in my opinion). I took a few pics and even a video.. but I'm having trouble uploading the pic right now, so I'll put it up later.