Intel Middleware Advertorial in December’s Develop
Sunday, December 20th, 2009We’re part of a big seven-page advertorial by Intel in this month’s Develop magazine. For more information on Simul Weather – go here.
Archive for 2009
Simul live on Intel Software Network
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009Welcome to listeners from Intel Software Network – the Simul Weather video can be found here!
DarkCLOUDS videos
Saturday, September 19th, 2009Here are some videos from DarkCLOUDS, our plug-in for DarkBASIC Professional.
Simul Weather video
Saturday, September 5th, 2009This is one of the most awesome uses Simul Weather has been put to!
Intel middleware gallery
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 |
Intel®, the leading maker of computer hardware, have featured Simul Weather in their Middleware Gallery. Simul Weather is fully compatible with the latest Intel multi-core processors, featuring optional support for Threading Building Blocks – find out more here. |
Simul at GDC Europe
Monday, August 17th, 2009Roderick Kennedy will be making the rounds at GDC Europe in Cologne and Gamescom this week. Contact: enquiries@simul.co.uk.
Help that helps
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009Simul Weather version 1.4.0 is ready to hit, it’s uploading overnight. There are numerous improvements, but the best new feature is that every page of the help file has a web-form that sends us direct feedback about the documentation.
Dark Clouds
Monday, August 3rd, 2009DarkBASIC is a complete game-development system aimed at the amateur-to-professional developer.
We’ve put together a version of Simul Weather for DarkBASIC – it has a few limitations that aren’t in the main product. It’s called DarkCLOUDS is now available from The Game Creators – find it here.
Going from DX9 to DX10
Monday, July 27th, 2009Going from DirectX 9 to DirectX 10 in C++:
DX10 (at least the version of August 2007) seems to really dislike rendering to buffers that aren’t powers of two – e.g. rendering to a HDR buffer that’s 1280 by 720!
Here’s a table of roughly corresponding DX9 and DX10 expressions:
| D3DFORMAT | -> | DXGI_FORMAT |
| D3DFMT_… | -> | DXGI_FORMAT_… |
| D3DUSAGE_… | -> | D3D10_USAGE_… |
| D3DVERTEXELEMENT9 | -> | D3D10_INPUT_ELEMENT_DESC |
| CreateVertexDeclaration | -> | CreateInputLayout |
| OnLostDevice | -> | not used? |
| D3DXCreateTexture | -> | ID3D10Device::CreateTexture1D, CreateTexture2D |
| D3DXCreateVolumeTexture | -> | ID3D10Device::CreateTexture3D |
| LockRect | -> | Map |
| UnlockRect | -> | Unmap |
| D3DLOCKED_RECT | -> | D3D10_MAPPED_TEXTURE2D |
| D3DLOCKED_BOX | -> | D3D10_MAPPED_TEXTURE3D |
| SetVertexDeclaration | -> | IASetInputLayout |
| ID3DXEffect::SetTexture | -> | ID3D10EffectShaderResourceVariable::SetResource |
| ID3DXEffect::SetVector | -> | ID3D10EffectVectorVariable::SetFloatVector |
| ID3DXEffect::SetFloat | -> | ID3D10EffectFloatVariable::SetFloat |
| D3DQUERYTYPE_ | -> | D3D10_QUERY_DESC |
| D3DXCreateTextureFromFile | -> | D3DX10CreateTextureFromFile |
| LPDIRECT3DSURFACE9, IDirect3DSurface9 * | -> | ID3D10RenderTargetView*, ID3D10DepthStencilView* |
| LPDIRECT3DTEXTURE9, IDirect3Texture9 | -> | ID3D10Texture1D, ID3D10Texture2D |
| D3DXHANDLE (for shader variables) | -> | ID3D10EffectScalarVariable*, ID3D10EffectVectorVariable*, etc. |
| LPDIRECT3DQUERY9, IDirect3DQuery9* | -> | ID3D10Query* |
| vs_1_1, etc. | -> | Not Supported |
| technique | -> | technique10 |
| cullmode=none | -> | SetRasterizerState( RenderNoCull ); |
| ZEnable = true; | -> | SetDepthStencilState( DisableDepth, 0 ); |
| AlphaBlendEnable = false; | -> | SetBlendStateNoBlend, float4( 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f ), 0xFFFFFFFF ); |
Simul Weather SDK 1.2 Released
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009Version 1.2 of our award-winning weather software is now available.
Simul Weather allows developers to generate real-time weather effects, including 3D volumetric clouds that grow and change in real time, with minimal CPU and GPU overhead. Already in-use in several major upcoming titles, Simul Weather saves many man-hours of effort for any developer looking to include live time-of-day effects, as well as generating a sky that just looks right.
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| Real-time images from Simul Weather 1.2, including sky, clouds, haze and fade tables. | ||||
Many companies expend a lot of effort on getting their sky looking right and end up with a compromised solution that uses unnecessary clock cycles. After 3 years’ research, our skies are physically correct, look like the real thing, and use a fraction of the system resources that most home-grown solutions do.
New features in version 1.2 include managed fade tables – for physically correct distance-fades that match seamlessly with the sky. Also included, optional threading support from Intel Threading Building Blocks – to distribute sky calculations over multiple cores.
As ever, the SDK includes clear, simple sample programs using DirectX and OpenGL, and drop-in source code for sky and cloud renderers. Available on PC and major console platforms, Simul Weather can be evaluated for free. Contact enquiries@simul.co.uk, or go to www.simul.co.uk/weather/licensing for details.