GDC 2013 organizers are highlighting new details for the March show's Developer Days, including a multi-company DirectX 11 rundown, and sponsored Dev Days from Intel on gestural technology, and Facebook on its ecosystem.
Taking place on the first two days (Monday, March 25, and Tuesday, March 26) of the San Francisco show, these full-day events offer GDC attendees a chance to learn about key development tools and platforms directly from the companies that make them.
In the multi-company presented "Advanced Visual Effects with Direct X 11," companies including NVIDIA, AMD, Crytek, and Crystal Dynamics will convene the day-long tutorial on the Direct3D technologies used in DirectX 11 and 11.1 and the ways they can be applied to cutting-edge graphics.
Along with hearing from tech experts at NVIDIA and AMD, Crystal Dynamics will offer a session on Tomb Raider on DirectX 11, and Crytek will speak about the rendering technologies of
Crysis 3 with regard to Microsoft's technology.
Elsewhere, Intel's sponsored Dev Day will offer a full day of learning how to use its Perceptual Computing SDK for "Natural, Intuitive, and Immersive Gaming," with the goal of taking game interaction beyond the mouse and keyboard, and toward gestures, finger and hand tracking, and face recognition.
Discussing tangible workflow solutions for Intel's event will be Slant Six Games' Robert Butterworth, who has shipped over 21 titles, including Star Wars & Spyro franchise titles and
Resident Evil: Raccoon City. Other speakers will also demo some engines already using the SDK, including Unity and OGRE. Along the way, attendees will receive a Creative Gesture Camera to continue building and experimenting on their own.
Facebook will also offer a sponsored Developer Day, with talks on present ecosystem trends, new products, mid-core game building with Unity, and best practices for integration and discoverability. The end of the day will also include Facebook game developer panel, where multiple speakers will share major trends for social games in 2013, as well as Q&As with the Facebook team.
Facebook's Developer Day speakers from the company and elsewhere specialize in a myriad of fields, including growth and engagement features, monetization, iOS and Android support, payments, and their game ecosystem.
All of the above events are open to attendees with passes including Summits & Tutorials and All Access passes, with those selecting the talks during the registration process getting priority