Field notes / Essays & engineering
Writing.
Rendering techniques taken apart, lessons from twelve years on one codebase, and the occasional detour when something outside graphics turns out to explain graphics better.
Spacetime is the headset. Consciousness is what's there when you take it off.
Spacetime as an interface rather than a substrate, and what that leaves consciousness to be.
What building a game engine for a decade and the SR-71 Blackbird have in common
Twelve years of rewrites taught me the same lesson Kelly Johnson wrote down sixty years earlier. Every rewrite came out simpler.
HDR in under 10 minutes
The shortest path to correct HDR output in a real renderer: Rec.2020, the PQ curve, and getting sRGB linearisation right.
Screen space shadows
Recovering the small-scale contact detail that shadow mapping loses, with a short ray march in screen space and a noise trick that lets TAA do the rest.