Digital Dragons will open its doors this weekend for its three-day B2B game dev conference. Held at ICE Krakow Congress Centre and Park Inn by Radisson Hotel, the expo allows attendees to share knowledge about their crafts, learn more about different sections of game development, and widen their network circle.
On its final day, Erik Jansson (Senior Graphics Programmer, will take to the stage for his talk on GPU-driven rendering with mesh shaders in Alan Wake 2. You can see the full lecture below...
GPU-driven Rendering with Mesh Shaders in Alan Wake 2
with Erik Jansson
Monday, May 20th 15:00 - 16:00
Lecture Description: Alan Wake 2 features vast and highly detailed outdoor environments with dense vegetation. In comparison to Control, the geometric complexity skyrocketed so much that we had to move to a GPU-driven rendering pipeline. This talk is about that journey. We’ll cover our overall design and the fine technical details of how to make it perform well. Mesh shaders are a central part of this pipeline; we’ll show how to efficiently cull and render meshlets, to take full advantage of the PS5 and XBSX|S GPU.
Speaker Biography: Erik holds a M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from Linköping University, Sweden. He's a Senior Graphics Programmer at Remedy Entertainment's Northlight engine team and has been working on Alan Wake 2 for 4 years. Before joining Remedy, Erik worked at UX3D as a GPU Software Engineer, and before that, at AMD, researching new ways to render strand-based hair in real-time. He's helped ship CONTROL on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Programming emulators and developing homebrew Nintendo 3DS demos is what he does for fun in his spare time. He’s obsessed with mechanical keyboards and also likes the sauna.
That's not all, though! On May 20th, Digital Dragons will kick off their annual gala, an awards ceremony celebrating game development and developers in their home country. While most awards are dedicated to Polish titles, Alan Wake 2 is nominated for "Best Foreign Game". The title is one of five titles competing for the trophy, alongside Baldur's Gate 3 (Larian Studios), Hogwarts Legacy (Avalanche Software), Starfield (Bethesda Game Studios), and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Nintendo EPD).
If you're interested in following the awards live, you can watch them via Remigiusz Maciaszek's YouTube and Twitch, which seem to have broadcast exclusivity. You can also watch the embedded stream below.
