Modularity, Extensibility and the Future of Game Engines

Explore the impact of open source on academia and its transformation over time as Royal, General Manager of Digital Media and Games at the Linux Foundation, speaks to Stephen Jacobs, professor at RIT’s School of Interactive Games & Media and head of Open@RIT. Stephen recounts his longtime involvement in open source, sparked by a program to develop educational games for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative that led to the birth of the netbook market and groundbreaking programs at RIT. He explains how open source projects, like the Open 3D Engine, enable students to gain practical experience, build their portfolios, and create professional connections, and touches on the significance of joining the Open 3D Foundation. Learn about RIT’s innovative Magic Center, a dynamic hub fostering collaboration and creativity in game development and multimedia, as well as Project Eureka, an exciting new initiative that provides students with real-world experience.

Guest: Stephen Jacobs -- Director, Open@RIT and Professor, School of Interactive Games & Media, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)

Stephen Jacobs designed and built exhibits for the Capital Children’s Museum in the 70′s, ran the AmiEXPO trade shows for the Commodore Amiga in the 80’s, and began teaching at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in the 90’s. Today, he teaches Video Game Design and Production at RIT, while running one of the largest and most comprehensive Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) university programs in the world, the FOSS@MAGIC.

Diversity and inclusion haven’t been the hallmarks of the gaming industry. But that’s changing thanks to advocates like Sheri Graner Ray and open source technologies that allow anyone to develop and showcase their skills. 

In this episode of Tales from the 3rd Dimension, Open 3D Foundation (O3DF) Executive Director Royal O’Brien chats with Sheri – an award-winning game designer, author, and consultant – about the trails she has blazed in the gaming industry, the barriers that have been torn down, and how others can forge their own path. 

In addition to revealing the Dungeons & Dragons defection that sparked her illustrious career, Sheri explains the impact diversity has on creativity, innovation, and the bottom line. She and Royal discuss the value of ready-made, open source engines for aspiring game developers. And they find insight and irony at the intersection of Barbie and Call of Duty.

GUEST BIO

Founder and CEO of Zombie Cat Studios, Sheri Graner Ray is an award-winning game designer, author, consultant, and speaker. She’s the recipient of an IGDA Game Developer’s Choice Award and has been named one of the top women in games by The Hollywood Reporter and WGEN. 

The applications for open source 3D technologies extend well beyond gaming realms. In fact, Open 3D Engine (O3DE) is increasingly being used to develop and validate the next generation of robots – those that will help us explore new worlds and assist with countless tasks here on Earth.

In this episode of Tales from the 3rd Dimension, Open 3D Foundation (O3DF) Executive Director Royal O’Brien talks with Robotec.ai’s VP of Robotics and Simulation Adam Dąbrowski about the value of simulating robot behaviors and their environments using O3DE.

In the wide-ranging discussion, Royal and Adam explain why traditional and commercial simulation engines are insufficient for the complexity and scale of modern robotics applications. They discuss the integration between O3DE and the popular robot operating system (ROS), and how it will accelerate robotic development and innovation. They talk about the joy, pride, and opportunities that often come with open source contributions and community participation. And they envision a future aided by fruit-picking farm robots and spacefaring exploration robots.

GUEST BIO

Adam Dąbrowski leads robotics and simulation work at Robotec.ai. He is also an independent expert in robotics for the EU Commission. His current focus is science, machine learning, robotics, research, and social impact projects. Adam is passionate about ideas and projects that benefit society as well as bold technical challenges.

Amazing interactive 3D content can spring to life across all 3D engines—and in time, the Metaverse—with open source tools that creators are accustomed to using. Integration and shared standards for interoperability across real-time 3D engines bring freedom and flexibility to those creators. Collaborative communities such as the Open 3D Foundation foster incredible innovation and creativity, drawing industry leaders together.

Royal O’Brien talked with Marc Petit, Vice President of the Unreal Engine Ecosystem at Epic Games about their shared passion for the future of 3D technology, covering a lot of ground:

• The evolutionary moments in 3D and the biggest trends that emerged in the transformative years from the 1990s to now, including: 
• The transition from work stations to PCs
• Real-time ray tracing (which brought Marc out of retirement and to Epic Games)
• Content democratization
• The maturity of hardware platforms
• The emergence of AI and ML advancements in helping create good content, allowing humans to do really creative things.
• The role 3D engines play as integrated toolsets, as complex as operating systems.
• The need for real-time 3D to be accessible everywhere, and why open source technology is the key to making that possible.  

Marc and Royal share an excitement for a future creator economy with real-time 3D as a mainstream medium. Together, all players in the industry can create a shared, standardized foundation of content that will catapult us to the next level of creation.

In response to the explosive growth of the content creator community and their desire to create new experiences and bring novel worlds to life, a complexity of tools has emerged. In this episode of Tales from the 3rd Dimension, Austin Robison, Head of Product for Game Engine and Developer Services at Amazon Web Services, and Open 3D Foundation Executive Director Royal O'Brien, talk about how the Open 3D Engine addresses these complexities through its modular, extensible framework. The two explore the evolution of game engines, what it truly means to be modular, how modularity differs from extensibility, and why this matters to content creators. They also explore the integration and combination of complex systems within systems to deliver the functionality needed by 3D artists and developers around the globe.

C++ is the underlying language driving projects in nearly every industry. It can be found in medical devices, oil exploration, financial, gaming, big machine equipment, safety devices, you name it, C++ is a part of it. Until the last few years, there have been very few options that deliver the performance of C++, and it continues to evolve. 

In this episode, Royal O’Brien talks with Jason Turner about C++, its origins and where it’s going. Listen and get their perspectives on: 

• Why tools like optimizing compilers, smart pointers, and standard containers make manual memory management an invalid reason for not choosing to use C++. 
• Some of the best uses cases for C++, such as:
• Soft real-time requirements 
• Performance
• Writing GUI applications
• Compiling onto WebAssembly for faster run time
• The pros and cons of successor languages, such as Rust.
• The momentum of C++ leading it to be the language used in 80% of 3D engines.
• The common misnomer that C# and C++ are equivalents.

Jason literally wrote the book on best practices for C++, and started a C++ best practices organization on GitHub (github.com/cpp-best-practices). Here are just a few of the top best practices he shares in this episode:

• Use C++ 11 threads for portability.
• Rely on existing, well-established, proven libraries, particularly if you're starting from scratch.
• It’s essential to have a continuous integration environment that ensures your application works across compilers and across platforms. 

Enjoy this episode of Tales from the 3rd Dimension, and in the meantime, if you’d like to learn more about Jason and his work, here’s how to find him:

• Twitter @lefticus
• YouTube channel, C++ Weekly, that he updates every week for the past 346 weeks. 
• Website, emptycrate.com. 

Podcast, CppCast. Although no new episodes are being recorded, there are more than 350 episodes covering a large variety of topics. 

Jason Turner, C++ Trainer, Speaker, and Developer

​​Jason is an internationally known, award winning, C++ keynote speaker and trainer. His YouTube channel, C++ Weekly, has a loyal following of over 60 thousand subscribers and more than 3 million views. He has spoken and provided training across the United States, Poland, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom and New Zealand at more than 10 conferences and 15 companies. Jason utilizes his 2 decades of C++ knowledge and unique training style to help organizations write clean, maintainable, and efficient programs. In recognition of his contributions to the C++ community, he has been awarded as a Microsoft MVP since 2015.

In many ways, the seedlings of today’s eye-popping 3D visual effects were planted a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. From its formation in 1975 to fulfill George Lucas’ vision for Star Wars to its wildly successful spinoff, Pixar Animation Studios, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) has been at the forefront of digital creation and innovation for decades. 

In this episode of Tales from the 3rd Dimension, ILM Chief Creative Officer Rob Bredow joins Open 3D Foundation Executive Director Royal O’Brien for an in-depth conversation about the parallels between the film and gaming industries, the convergence of modular tools and end-to-end workflows, and the impact of open source innovation. Rob and Royal discuss:

• The open source roots of the film industry and the role of open source software in advancing the state of the industry and spurring cross-company collaboration
• The convergence point that real-time rendering, most commonly associated with games, plays in expanding pre-visualization and on set to aid actors’ performances in advance of final print, fully rendered effects
• How 3D technologies will enable new interactive experiences, user-generated content and the metaverse

“When you can develop software that's close to the artists and engineers who are using it, and they can scratch their own itches, you start to see innovation happen more quickly.”

–Rob Bredow, Chief Creative Officer, ILM

Most listeners know that Huawei isn’t just a mobile phone company. But many might not realize that it runs a global network of research institutes that are working on optimizing engine development. Tobias Alexander Franke, principal game engine architect at Huawei, talks with Royal about why the company prefers working with open source 3D engines over commercial 3D engines. Highlighting the benefits of different perspectives, he believes open source collaboration results in a more well-rounded engine. Tobias and Royal reflect on other hot topics like the early days of the Open 3D Engine (O3DE) in GitHub, the need for standardization for greater interoperability and the development of the Metaverse.

Guest Name, Title, Bio: Tobias Alexander Franke, Principal Game Engine Architect, Huawei

Tobias Alexander Franke, principal game engine architect at Huawei, is an experienced graphics engineer with a background in both graphics research and the gaming industry. He holds a PhD from TU-Darmstadt focused on augmented reality, relighting and global illumination.

“Do more work out in the open” is the #1 piece of advice Shehzan Mohammed has for his students, as director of 3D Engineering and Ecosystems at Cesium and GPU Programming lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. With an academic focus and a vision for the future of 3D modeling, Shehzan shares his views with Royal about the benefits of working in open source and the fulfillment that comes from it. They explore and illuminate the work needed to process massive amounts of raw data and stream it through the cloud. Shehzan shares some of his favorite use cases he has been a part of at Cesium, and his definition of Metaverse as the next evolution of the Internet as we know it today.

Guest Name, Title, Bio: Shehzan Mohammed, Director of 3D Engineering and Ecosystems, Cesium and GPU Programming Lecturer, University of Pennsylvania

As Director of 3D Engineering & Ecosystems, Shehzan Mohammed oversees the growth of the Cesium ecosystem through outward-facing engineering, partnerships, community growth, and customer success. He is in charge of advancing the engineering and development of Cesium’s products and runtime engines to have the greatest impact for Cesium's users and community. He also contributes to the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) to advance open standards for geospatial applications and is a frequent contributor and speaker on 3D geospatial technology. In addition, Shehzan teaches GPU Programming at University of Pennsylvania, helping students be day-1 ready for their careers in software development.