Small extension to the path tracer: soft shadows by sampling the light as having size instead of being infinitely small (gif shows before/after). Next is fixing lighting and bounces, because they are right now a huge hack :)

Last past week, I (hastily) hacked a path tracer into my home engine to act as a validation tool. For all the issues that it has from being implemented in ~1 hour, it is difficult to argue about the results. Hopefully I don't get carried away trying to make it too complex/perfect :)

The Cost of AI alextardif.com/AI.html

Time to try the new font: I want to support high DPI on my home engine, but UI scaling was a bit of an issue when using the internal font (due to my monitor setup), so the vector font was the last part missing for my niche use case and desires 🙂 (I tried a bunch of TrueType fonts, but hit issues)

Omar@ocornut.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Dear ImGui 1.92.6 released! github.com/ocornut/imgu... ~80 fixes/improvements/additions (incl. new default scalable vector font matching classic font, color markers on multi-components widgets, many fixes for fonts, tables, tree nodes, text input, navigation, viewports, backends...)

A while ago I made a note to release all the code from the demos I ported from MS-DOS to Windows, and got to it a few weeks ago. These are demoscene productions from the 90s that I ported to windows, captured at high quality and uploaded to youtube, so anyone can enjoy them easily.

Over the vacation I decided to continue a project I started 20 years ago: reimplementing the Platipus / Incognita demo graphic driver, so it would work on newer computers. I fixed a bunch of bugs, implemented a graphic driver 3 times without the original source code, and captured a 4k video :)

As it wasn't enough to port the hardware interface I am working on from DirectX7 to OpenGL 1.X, and then to DirectX9, now I am porting to DirectX11 to be able to use RenderDoc/PIX to debug the remaining issues... fun!

So I am now figuring out blend modes from a decompiled DirectX7 render interface, fun! (and way easier than I expected)

Here I am, on my vacation, porting OpenGL code to DirectX9, because I need/want fixed function for now. Although I wrote 3D engines with both, it is quite the struggle to remember all the fixed function details after being used to shaders for so long :')

Back in 2021 I released a Vulkan sample that demonstrated adding ray-tracing to a traditional game render pipeline. Since then the code has rotted away and stopped working. So this week I finally resurrected it! Hope it will keep being a learning resource for beginners. github.com/diharaw/hybr...

I finally solved the mystery movie mistake in “Episode III”, and also talk about some of my favorite revealing movie mistakes from my favorite films. The Movie Mistake Mystery from "Revenge of the Sith" fxrant.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-...

The Movie Mistake Mystery from "Revenge of the Sith"

Movies are handmade, and just like any other art form, sometimes the seams that hold movies together become visible to the audience. For mov...

fxrant.blogspot.com

Fafling worked miracles with his latest patch to fix the Saturn version of Doom, improving the game's frame rate dramatically, fixing graphical glitches and making other improvements! Read all about it in our story: www.segasaturnshiro.com/2025/04/14/l... #sega #saturn #segasaturn #retrogaming

I also like implementing game level/data viewers, including but not limited to Quake (1-3), Source (Portal, HL2), Doom (1-2,3,2016), Carmageddon, Tomb Raider, Soul Reaver (1-2)

I am also a (semi) retired demoscener, mostly focusing on 4k intros, small executables of only 4096 containing music, graphics and animation, with most of the content procedurally generated!

I have worked on a bunch of emulators over the years, some all by myself (Gameboy, NES, Gamegear, Master System), some as part of a team (PSP, Nintendo DS)

Let's fill this account with a few highlights from the past