Pinned
Nico May
@gfxnico.bsky.social
· Oct 20
I guess I forgot to do an intro post.
I’m Nico May and I work at Xbox on/with the team(s) that do graphics driver, GPU tooling (PIX), shader compiler, and developer engagement / samples.
Mostly I’ve been focussed on raytracing driver performance, tooling, and advising developers.
I’m Nico May and I work at Xbox on/with the team(s) that do graphics driver, GPU tooling (PIX), shader compiler, and developer engagement / samples.
Mostly I’ve been focussed on raytracing driver performance, tooling, and advising developers.
Reposted by Nico May
#SIGGRAPH2025 Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games course talk recording of "Strand-Based Hair And Fur Rendering In Indiana Jones and The Great Circle" by Sergei Kulikov from MachineGames is now online: youtu.be/jSE1XXBEK-w
SIGGRAPH 2025 Advances: STRAND-BASED HAIR AND FUR RENDERING IN INDIANA JONES AND THE GREAT CIRCLE
YouTube video by SIGGRAPH Advances in Real-Time Rendering
youtu.be
November 11, 2025 at 11:45 PM
#SIGGRAPH2025 Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games course talk recording of "Strand-Based Hair And Fur Rendering In Indiana Jones and The Great Circle" by Sergei Kulikov from MachineGames is now online: youtu.be/jSE1XXBEK-w
Reposted by Nico May
This illustrates the full process of capturing the "Essence" of a mesh to be used in a morph. The distance field is retrieved and then the mesh is projected onto the cube-shaped "screen" in order to pack its surface properties into two cubemaps.
November 4, 2025 at 6:12 PM
This illustrates the full process of capturing the "Essence" of a mesh to be used in a morph. The distance field is retrieved and then the mesh is projected onto the cube-shaped "screen" in order to pack its surface properties into two cubemaps.
Reposted by Nico May
I wrote a neat morph system for Keeper and hopefully I can share a bit more about it in the future. This particular morph was an experiment using symmetry that didn't make it into the game in the end.
October 23, 2025 at 9:23 PM
I wrote a neat morph system for Keeper and hopefully I can share a bit more about it in the future. This particular morph was an experiment using symmetry that didn't make it into the game in the end.
Reposted by Nico May
Columbo is the ideal for a point and click adventure game. He has a little comment for everything in the environment, he wanders around places freely, and he exhausts the dialogue tree of everyone he speaks to
October 22, 2025 at 2:57 PM
Columbo is the ideal for a point and click adventure game. He has a little comment for everything in the environment, he wanders around places freely, and he exhausts the dialogue tree of everyone he speaks to
Gotta re-download Alan Wake 2 every once in a while just to remind myself how absurdly pretty it is.
October 8, 2025 at 6:46 AM
Gotta re-download Alan Wake 2 every once in a while just to remind myself how absurdly pretty it is.
Reposted by Nico May
the guy who was walking to the farlands in minecraft is getting there in an hour or two: www.twitch.tv/kurtjmac
kurtjmac - Twitch
Reaching the FAR LANDS after 14.5 Years - FLoB-a-Thon Day 69 - !charity !map
www.twitch.tv
October 4, 2025 at 10:23 PM
the guy who was walking to the farlands in minecraft is getting there in an hour or two: www.twitch.tv/kurtjmac
More fun with Rain and Fog :)
October 4, 2025 at 8:56 PM
More fun with Rain and Fog :)
Reposted by Nico May
In light of EA's upcoming change of ownership... here's your annual reminder that Will Wright's original GDC 2005 demo of Spore was one of the most incredible game demos every presented, before the game was utterly and totally ruined by EA's meddling.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofA6...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofA6...
Will Wright GDC 2005 Spore (The Future of Content) Remastered
YouTube video by Zeusmonomon
www.youtube.com
October 2, 2025 at 9:26 PM
In light of EA's upcoming change of ownership... here's your annual reminder that Will Wright's original GDC 2005 demo of Spore was one of the most incredible game demos every presented, before the game was utterly and totally ruined by EA's meddling.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofA6...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofA6...
Quote-post for OnlyPosts feed.
Configurability! And lower res to maybe help with not just looking like mush after video compression.
October 1, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Quote-post for OnlyPosts feed.
Reposted by Nico May
New blog post! In "Billions of triangles in minutes" we'll walk through hierarchical cluster level of detail generation of, well, billions of triangles in minutes. Reposts welcome!
zeux.io/2025/09/30/b...
zeux.io/2025/09/30/b...
September 30, 2025 at 5:40 PM
New blog post! In "Billions of triangles in minutes" we'll walk through hierarchical cluster level of detail generation of, well, billions of triangles in minutes. Reposts welcome!
zeux.io/2025/09/30/b...
zeux.io/2025/09/30/b...
Reposted by Nico May
#SIGGRAPH2025 Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games course talk recording of "Ray Tracing The World of Assassin’s Creed Shadows" by Luc Leblanc and Melino Conte from Ubisoft is now online: youtu.be/2K-rwy4aMmU?...
RAY TRACING THE WORLD OF ASSASSIN'S CREED SHADOWS (Advances in Real-Time Rendering SIGGRAPH 2025)
YouTube video by SIGGRAPH Advances in Real-Time Rendering
youtu.be
September 30, 2025 at 1:57 AM
#SIGGRAPH2025 Advances in Real-Time Rendering in Games course talk recording of "Ray Tracing The World of Assassin’s Creed Shadows" by Luc Leblanc and Melino Conte from Ubisoft is now online: youtu.be/2K-rwy4aMmU?...
Reposted by Nico May
A little something I've been meaning to write for a while martinfullerblog.wordpress.com/2025/09/26/a...
Thank you to the awesome people at Machine Games and id Software!
Thank you to the awesome people at Machine Games and id Software!
Anisotropic Scaling in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and DOOM: The Dark Ages
While working on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and later DOOM: The Dark Ages, it became apparent that both titles are particularly sensitive to anisotropic sampling cost on the Xbox Series con…
martinfullerblog.wordpress.com
September 26, 2025 at 9:31 AM
A little something I've been meaning to write for a while martinfullerblog.wordpress.com/2025/09/26/a...
Thank you to the awesome people at Machine Games and id Software!
Thank you to the awesome people at Machine Games and id Software!
Reposted by Nico May
Continuing on the topic of GPU utilisation and performance, as a practical example, I looked a bit deeper into the impact of vertex shader exports on the cost of a drawcall and wrote another blog post with some observations interplayoflight.wordpress.com/2025/09/21/t...
The performance impact of vertex shader exports
Following up on the previous post on GPU utilization and performance, and to provide a practical example, I expanded a bit on a topic discussed in brief: vertex shader exports and their impact on p…
interplayoflight.wordpress.com
September 21, 2025 at 8:05 PM
Continuing on the topic of GPU utilisation and performance, as a practical example, I looked a bit deeper into the impact of vertex shader exports on the cost of a drawcall and wrote another blog post with some observations interplayoflight.wordpress.com/2025/09/21/t...
Reposted by Nico May
IT'S OUR NINTH BIRTHDAY 🎉
So we're launching a brand new channel - dedicated to discovering new games that push our industry forward, previews of exciting new titles and reporting on the issues that face gaming today.
welcome to noclip_2
TRAILER: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7lf...
So we're launching a brand new channel - dedicated to discovering new games that push our industry forward, previews of exciting new titles and reporting on the issues that face gaming today.
welcome to noclip_2
TRAILER: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7lf...
Welcome to noclip_2 - Launch Trailer
YouTube video by noclip_2
www.youtube.com
September 12, 2025 at 5:37 PM
IT'S OUR NINTH BIRTHDAY 🎉
So we're launching a brand new channel - dedicated to discovering new games that push our industry forward, previews of exciting new titles and reporting on the issues that face gaming today.
welcome to noclip_2
TRAILER: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7lf...
So we're launching a brand new channel - dedicated to discovering new games that push our industry forward, previews of exciting new titles and reporting on the issues that face gaming today.
welcome to noclip_2
TRAILER: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7lf...
Accidentally left my depth buffer out and it went moldy :(
September 11, 2025 at 3:57 AM
Accidentally left my depth buffer out and it went moldy :(
Reposted by Nico May
I've got a new blog post for all of you fine folks! It runs through the additions to D3D12 since it was released, and finishes up with some of the things that have changed for me personally in my code.
(And yes it's really been 10 years 👴).
therealmjp.github.io/posts/ten-ye...
(And yes it's really been 10 years 👴).
therealmjp.github.io/posts/ten-ye...
Ten Years of D3D12
For those of us that have been using it from the start, it can be hard to believe that Direct3D 12 has been around for nearly ten years now. Windows 10 was released on July 29th 2015, and D3D12 has be...
therealmjp.github.io
September 8, 2025 at 12:49 AM
I've got a new blog post for all of you fine folks! It runs through the additions to D3D12 since it was released, and finishes up with some of the things that have changed for me personally in my code.
(And yes it's really been 10 years 👴).
therealmjp.github.io/posts/ten-ye...
(And yes it's really been 10 years 👴).
therealmjp.github.io/posts/ten-ye...
Reposted by Nico May
Rec Room was fun, but had to lay off a lot of folks, so I am looking for the next opportunity.
If you are looking for a senior graphics coder to solve all your rendering problems on any platform, either remote or in the Seattle area, I'd love to hear from you.
Picture is purely for attention.
If you are looking for a senior graphics coder to solve all your rendering problems on any platform, either remote or in the Seattle area, I'd love to hear from you.
Picture is purely for attention.
September 4, 2025 at 11:23 PM
Rec Room was fun, but had to lay off a lot of folks, so I am looking for the next opportunity.
If you are looking for a senior graphics coder to solve all your rendering problems on any platform, either remote or in the Seattle area, I'd love to hear from you.
Picture is purely for attention.
If you are looking for a senior graphics coder to solve all your rendering problems on any platform, either remote or in the Seattle area, I'd love to hear from you.
Picture is purely for attention.
Effective hobby coding setup :)
August 30, 2025 at 2:43 AM
Effective hobby coding setup :)
Reposted by Nico May
#SIGGRAPH2025 Advances talks slides sharing: "Strand-based hair and fur rendering in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle" by Sergei Kulikov from Machine games is now online advances.realtimerendering.com/s2025/index....
August 26, 2025 at 5:09 AM
#SIGGRAPH2025 Advances talks slides sharing: "Strand-based hair and fur rendering in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle" by Sergei Kulikov from Machine games is now online advances.realtimerendering.com/s2025/index....
Reposted by Nico May
Digital Foundry in 3 years (maybe)
August 20, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Digital Foundry in 3 years (maybe)
Reposted by Nico May
As the date for the 20th anniversary of Advances is coming, I realized some content was missing.
Posted 2007 and 2008 courses online - check them out!
advances.realtimerendering.com
Posted 2007 and 2008 courses online - check them out!
advances.realtimerendering.com
August 9, 2025 at 9:15 AM
As the date for the 20th anniversary of Advances is coming, I realized some content was missing.
Posted 2007 and 2008 courses online - check them out!
advances.realtimerendering.com
Posted 2007 and 2008 courses online - check them out!
advances.realtimerendering.com
Reposted by Nico May
For that weird, narrow segment of technically-minded programmers who want to know how we programmed 3D graphics in the 90s and also want to know about 80% of the stuff I programmed before RAD, I sat down for a 5 hour interview on the Wookash Podcast.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1tX...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1tX...
Legendary Software Rendering Era | Sean Barrett
YouTube video by Wookash Podcast
www.youtube.com
July 19, 2025 at 4:27 PM
For that weird, narrow segment of technically-minded programmers who want to know how we programmed 3D graphics in the 90s and also want to know about 80% of the stuff I programmed before RAD, I sat down for a 5 hour interview on the Wookash Podcast.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1tX...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1tX...
Reposted by Nico May
This is a great thread @hillsguy.bsky.social, I'll add a bit more context here for anyone interested.
Yes there's no fancy sim - it just uses a water interaction buffer as a target for the particle system rendering, so we could use the power of particle system we already have.
Yes there's no fancy sim - it just uses a water interaction buffer as a target for the particle system rendering, so we could use the power of particle system we already have.
Decided to check out how water is rendered in Counter-Strike 2.
Given how interactive water in CS2 is, I expected to see some cellular fluid simulation, but turns out they just use a low-resolution off-screen buffer with flat 2D decals used for various aspects of water. Reminds me of HL2 water :)
Given how interactive water in CS2 is, I expected to see some cellular fluid simulation, but turns out they just use a low-resolution off-screen buffer with flat 2D decals used for various aspects of water. Reminds me of HL2 water :)
June 13, 2025 at 9:06 PM
This is a great thread @hillsguy.bsky.social, I'll add a bit more context here for anyone interested.
Yes there's no fancy sim - it just uses a water interaction buffer as a target for the particle system rendering, so we could use the power of particle system we already have.
Yes there's no fancy sim - it just uses a water interaction buffer as a target for the particle system rendering, so we could use the power of particle system we already have.
