Introduction to basic architecture of Game Engine with focus on Game engine and Image Generator.

1. Game Engine for Serious Games An Overview by Flt Lt KashifShamaun

2. What are Serious Games A game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. The word “serious“ is generally appended to refer products used by industries like defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning, engineering, religion, and politics.

3. Examples

4. Basic Components of Game Visuals Game Engine aka Rendering Engine Image Generator the hardware Visual Database

5. + + -> -> Visual Database Image Generator Controls Graphics Engine Display = Serious Game

6. + + -> -> Visual Database Image Generator Controls Graphics Engine Display = Serious Game

7. + + -> -> Controls Display Game Visuals = Serious Game

8. Game Engine Component I

9. Game Engine Controls the presentation of game world Geometry and Texture 3D Sound Simulation (i.e. Physics) AI Network Traffic Environment Multiplayer

10. What is there in Game World Environment Physics Model Physics Object Physics AI Terrain 3D Models 3D Sound Texture

11. Geometry & Textures Terrain 3D Models

12. Satellite Images + DEM = Terrain Terrain DEM Satellite Images

13. How Terrain Looks Like

14. 3D Models Poly Model Shaded Model Textured Model

15. 3D Sound

16. 3D Sound 3D audio Sounds are part of the scene graph Each sound has a geometric location Dolby Pro Logic and Dolby Digital “5.1” channels: 2 main, center, 2 rear surround, subwoofer

17. Simulation or Physics Engine Models behavior in game world Collision detection FDM in case of Flight Simulator

18. Artificial Intelligence Design of intelligent agents where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximize its chances of success. Computer generated forces or enemies

19. Network Traffic Synchronize game clients Game world is a distributed database Scene graph derived from game world Industry standards HLA (High Level Architecture) CIGI (Common Image Generator Interface) DIS (Distributed Interface Simulation)

20. Environment Visibility range Cloud layers, solid or variable patchiness Wet & snow-covered surfaces Thunderstorm cell, lightning flash & bolt Volumetric ground & patchy fog Sea states 0 through 9

21. Multiplayer Multiplayer on LAN or WAN

22. Game engine operations The Game Engine generates an image from models. Converts 3D models into 2D images.

23. Scene Graph

24. Rendering Stages

25. Rendering Process

26. Image Generator Component II

27. Typical IGs

28. Serious Games’ IG

29. IG Architecture

30. Modern Graphics Hardware Pipelining Number of stages Parallelism Number of parallel processes Parallelism + pipelining Number of parallel pipelines 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3

31. Performance parameters Caching Update Rate Display resolution

32. Gen Lock & Frame Lock Genlock & frame Lock is a technique where the video output of one source, or a specific reference signal, is used to sync other picture sources together.

33. Anisotropic Filtering It is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces that are at oblique viewing angles with respect to the camera.

34. Light point capacity The number of light points that can be handled.

35. Levels of detail (LOD) LODs are sets of models that represent the same object or terrain area with varying degrees of complexity

36. Levels of detail (LOD)

37. Antialiasing Antialiasing, as the name suggests, is a technique used to combat an effect known as aliasing.

38. Addressable moving objects The number of moving or animated models per frame.

39. Blend zones and Alpha transparency level Alpha blending is the process of combining a translucent foreground color with a background color, thereby producing a new blended color. The number of alpha blending in a frame is blend zones. Alpha transparency level is the level of transparency that can be handled.

40. z-Buffer Itis the management of image depth coordinates in three-dimensional (3-D) graphics It is designed to improve efficiency by selectively choosing which elements in a scene need to be rendered

41. Iteration rate The "physics" iterations performed every second.

42. Polygonal capacity The polygon capacity of an image generator is most often expressed in polygons per second. The polygons per second number is divided by any frame rate to yield the polygons in each image.

43. Other Features Output modes Number of channels Database Type Supported

44. The secret to good IG Maximize  Optimize 

45. References Presages Creator Manuals “Game Hardware and Engines” by J. Scott Hofmann www.wikipedia.org www.gamedev.net “Game Development All in One” by Bruno Miguel Teixeira de Sousa Quantum 3D IG brochures Medellin 6000 brochure Images from www.google.com and www.bing.com search engines “3D Engines in games” by Author: Michal Valient “Introduction to Graphics Hardware and GPUs” by Yannick and Tom