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View, browse and sort the ever-growing list of sessions by day, pass type, topic, and format. With this Session Viewer, you can view GDC 2023 session details and speakers, and share your favorites via social media. You will be able to build your schedule and access it during the show via export or Mobile App, once live. Sessions do fill up and seating is first come, first serve, so arrive early to sessions that you would like to attend.

Real-time Sparse Distance Fields for Games (Presented by AMD)

Lou Kramer  (Software Development Engineer, AMD)

Location: Room 3001, West Hall

Date: Thursday, March 23

Time: 12:45 pm - 1:45 pm

Pass Type: All Access Pass, Core Pass, Summits Pass, Expo Pass, Audio Pass, Independent Games Summit Pass

Topic: Programming

Format: Sponsored Session

Vault Recording: Not Recorded

Audience Level: Intermediate

AMD Advanced Micro Devices

This presentation will introduce a novel algorithm for PC and console developers to efficiently generate sparse distance fields (SDFs) in real-time. Although ray tracing has been more widely adopted throughout the past years to compute various effects, an implementation that ensures a high framerate while maintaining a high-quality output across a variety of GPUs remains challenging.

SDFs provide a compute-based scalable alternative that helps accelerate complex scene representation and traversal with a stable frame rate. SDFs are computed in a continuous manner on static or dynamic geometries introduced to the scene to avoid redundant computations and ensure optimal performance. Cascades act as MIP levels to ensure high scalability. The global scene data representation enabled by SDFs can then be leveraged as inputs to modern graphics algorithm, such as Global Illumination or Ambient Occlusion.