Valve at GDC 2015: Physics talks

It is the second day of talks at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco today, but the first day of talks by Valve employees.

SteamDB Team / 3 March 2015

This blog post is no longer being actively updated.

It is the second day of talks at the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco today, but the first day of talks by Valve employees.

11:15am-12:15pm: Physics for Game Programmers: Robust Contact Creation for Physics Simulation by Dirk Gregorius (Ended)

3:00pm-4:00pm: Physics for Game Programmers: Physics Optimization Strategies by Sergiy Migdalskiy (Right now)

We don't have a person on the ground today so liveblogs will consist out of information that comes in through third-parties (Social media, forums, etc.) just like our Steam Dev Days liveblogs early 2014.

Keep in mind that we're not expecting much Valve news today, but there might be some interesting stuff in the talks that we'll post.

If you have any feedback regarding our reporting or our new live commenting system, drop us a note on Twitter.

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Previous updates (oldest first)

18:16 UTC · ·

xPaw

As today probably isn't going to be very interesting, we decided to build a live commenting system from scratch and are testing it for the first time in production right now.

19:15 UTC · ·

Marlamin

The first talk "Physics for Game Programmers: Robust Contact Creation for Physics Simulation" by Valve's Dirk Gregorius should have started now.

19:25 UTC · ·

Marlamin

Dirk begins with recapping contact solving. #GDC pic.twitter.com/IzhqQQxuP2
— Josh Stefanski (@nikaji) March 3, 2015

19:42 UTC · ·

Marlamin

Just like Dirk's GDC 2014 talk this one is pretty technical so far, not much stuff to liveblog about!

20:16 UTC · ·

Marlamin

Only Sphere, Capsule, Hull, and Mesh collision are supported. Boxes are hulls. Really does simplify computations.
— Josh Stefanski (@nikaji) March 3, 2015

20:18 UTC · ·

Marlamin

That's it for the first talk. When/if slides pop up we'll be sure to post them, but apparently nothing especially interesting for us normal folks was discussed. All highly specific developer physics stuff that isn't interesting enough for people to tweet about to the general public. If last year was an indication the next talk should be more interesting.

23:00 UTC · ·

Marlamin

Sergiy Migdalskiy's talk about "Physics for Game Programmers: Physics Optimization Strategies" should have started by now. Let's hope this talk is more talked about on Twitter than the previous one!

Please keep in mind that this is a developer conference, don't expect any announcements.

23:06 UTC · ·

Marlamin

You can check Sergiy's talk from last year at GDCVault.

23:11 UTC · ·

Marlamin

Optimization talk starts with how bad virtual methods are and how cache coherency is important. Agreed.
— Josh Stefanski (@nikaji) March 3, 2015

23:23 UTC · ·

xPaw

While we wait for more (or any) information, check out ValveTime's spotlight on Rubikon (Valve's physics engine) which both Dirk Gregorius and Sergiy Migdalskiy work on.

23:47 UTC · ·

Marlamin

Relative pointers = offset from the pointer itself. Easy loading w/o fixup.
— Josh Stefanski (@nikaji) March 3, 2015

23:58 UTC · ·

Marlamin

Valve just sent out a press release officially announcing Source 2 & SteamVR at #GDC2015. Full unedited release: https://t.co/v0J2lMl2DA
— Steam Database (@SteamDB) March 3, 2015

00:09 UTC · ·

Marlamin

We're going to focus on the stuff Valve just announced in the press release. Keep an eye on this post for the latest. This ends the liveblog of Valve's physics talks. If they talked about anything interesting we'll highlight it later.

And the universe was born…