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  • Spotlight on Roblox Research – Roblox Blog

    Spotlight on Roblox Research – Roblox Blog

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    At Roblox, our researchers drive our vision to reimagine the way people come together. We have over 100 PhDs collaborating across the fundamental Roblox Research team and applied Data Science & Analytics, User Research, and advanced engineering R&D teams. Together, they invent the future of Roblox, helping us truly deliver on our value of “taking the long view.”

    The Roblox Research scientists publish findings in academic conferences, release open source and data, collaborate with universities, and bootstrap transferring results into production. Here are the team members responsible for that innovation.

    Morgan McGuire

    Chief Scientist
    Recent Publications

    Prof. McGuire accelerates innovation across Roblox by coordinating all of the research groups and directly managing Roblox Research as well as the engineering development of the Game Engine product.

    Morgan has co-authored hundreds of papers and patents, spanning many areas of computer science from networking and compilers to 3D graphics, as well as several textbooks including Computer Graphics: Principles & Practice 3rd Edition, The Graphics Codex, and Creating Games. Morgan co-founded the Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques and chaired ACM SIGGRAPH NPAR, I3D, HPG, and several other conferences. Morgan’s product contributions include NVIDIA RTXGI and Reflex SDKs and RTX GPUs; the Skylanders®, Call of Duty®, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance®, and Titan Quest® video games series; the Unity game engine; the E Ink display used in the Amazon Kindle®; and the open source G3D Innovation Engine and Markdeep document system.

    Morgan holds current faculty appointments at the University of Waterloo and McGill University, was a full professor at Williams College, and received a PhD and MS in computer science from Brown University and an MEng and BS in electrical engineering from MIT.

    Victor Zordan

    Principal Scientist
    Recent Publications

    Prof. Zordan investigates the broad area of computer graphics and interactive techniques, with specializations in computer animation with physical models, VR, motion capture, and interfaces.

    He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the ACM in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (PACMCGIT), chaired and organized the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Computer Animation (SCA) and the ACM SIGGRAPH Motion, Interaction, and Games (MIG) conferences, and served on many program committees.

    He was a faculty member for twenty years, most recently as a full professor leading the Visual Computing Division of the School of Computing at Clemson University, where he continues to hold an adjunct research faculty member position. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

    Arjun Guha

    Senior Scientist
    Recent Publications

    Prof. Guha has broad interests in programming languages and systems and researches problems that arise in web security, software-defined networking, distributed systems, and robotics. At Roblox, Arjun is working to make the platform dramatically more scalable and easier to program.

    Arjun holds a position as Associate Professor of Computer Science at Northeastern University and leads an academic group there. He received his PhD from Brown University and BA from Grinnell College.

    Cem Yuksel

    Senior Scientist
    Recent Publications

    Prof. Yuksel investigates computer graphics and related fields, including physically-based simulations, realistic image synthesis, rendering techniques, global illumination, sampling, GPU algorithms, graphics hardware, modeling complex geometries, and knitted structures, along with hair modeling, animation, and rendering. His introductory and advanced graphics lecture videos that are freely available online are watched by thousands of graphics students, professionals, and enthusiasts worldwide.

    Cem chaired and organized the ACM SIGGRAPH/Eurographics High-Performance Graphics (HPG) and ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D) conferences, in addition to contributing to numerous conferences as a program committee member. He is the Real-Time Live! program chair for SIGGRAPH 2023 and the founder of graphics software company Cyber Radiance LLC.

    Cem currently holds an Associate Professor position in the School of Computing at the University of Utah. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University after receiving his PhD degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University.

    Tania Lorido-Botrán

    Research Scientist
    Recent Publications

    Dr. Tania Lorido-Botrán is currently a Research Scientist at Roblox. Prior to that, she worked at Microsoft and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Her research interests lie across machine learning, systems, and optimization.

    Dr. Lorido-Botran received her PhD from the University of Deusto in Spain with a cum laude distinction, and her master’s degree in Distributed Systems from University of the Basque Country with a highest marks distinction.

    Tony Liu

    Research Program Manager
    Recent Publications

    Tony Liu researches mental wellness, healthcare, and digital civility by combining techniques from causal inference and machine learning. He previously worked at IBM Watson Health and has published in Nature Computational Science as well as ICML and AAAI workshops. He coordinates academic collaboration, technology transfer, and external communication for Roblox Research.

    Tony holds a BA in Computer Science with highest honors from Williams College. He is completing a PhD in Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania advised by Profs. Lyle Ungar and Konrad Kording.

    Layla Mah

    Senior Technical Director

    Layla Mah optimizes all aspects of the Roblox distributed system for runtime scalability and internal engineering efficiency.

    She is also known for her work as CEO of InsightfulVR, developing their decoupled light field rendering and streaming engine, and their PerfLab performance automation system; co-founder of Fringe Studios, which specializes in AAA game engine optimization; Lead Architect of VR and Advanced Rendering at AMD; and contributions to shipping many PC and console game titles, including the Sid Meier’s Civilization, Thief, BioShock, and Infinite Crisis game series.

    Layla performed undergraduate and graduate research in computer graphics, physics simulation, and robotics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

    Kiran Bhat

    Senior Director

    Dr. Bhat is the Senior Director of Engineering in Roblox’s Game Engine division, overseeing the research and development of real-time deep learning technologies for 3D avatars. Kiran was the co-founder/CTO of Loom.ai, which merged with Roblox in December 2020. Kiran’s team at Loom.ai built lifelike human face visualizations by automatically converting selfies into expressive 3D avatars that interact in real time with visual and audio signals.

    Kiran won the 2017 Sci-Tech Oscar for architecting ILM’s facial performance capture engine that was used to create several iconic movie characters like the Hulk in Marvel’s The Avengers, the Orcs in Warcraft, and to “bring back” Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

    Kiran received his PhD in Robotics from the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.

    Mitesh Shah

    Senior Director

    Mitesh Shah is the Senior Director of Programming Languages for the Game Engine product and directly manages research and development of languages and programming models that power the creation of millions of experiences on Roblox. Previously, he built and led high-performance R&D teams at Meta, Synopsys, and start-ups delivering state-of-the-art solutions in the PL domain. Throughout his career, Mitesh developed compilers and programming models for a vast variety of processor architectures including massively parallel processors, network processors, highly embedded RISCs, Vector DSPs, VLIW machines, and neural network ML accelerators.

    Mitesh holds an MS in computer science from Texas A&M University and his research interests include parallelizing compilers and processor architecture, along with exploiting perf, efficiency, reliability, and security through PL and runtime.

    Kenny Mitchell

    Technical Director
    Recent Publications

    Prof. Mitchell is a Technical Director of Rendering at Roblox. He has patented over 50 inventions and authored and co-authored over 100 technical papers.

    He delivers creative technologies to the widest audiences including the BAFTA award-winning BoomBlox® with Steven Spielberg; the Command & Conquer®, Disney Infinity®, Harry Potter® series of video games; Star Wars® & Avatar® rides/animatronics; and the Finding Dory® and Pirates of the Caribbean® movies. 

    A founding co-editor-in-chief of the ACM Games journal and associate editor of Proceedings of the ACM Computer Graphics & Interactive Techniques (PACM CGIT) and Elsevier Computers & Graphics (C&G) journals, he has chaired ACM SIGGRAPH Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D), CVMP and RVCAI international conferences and is a member of the SIGGRAPH conference advisory group. Kenny is a co-founder of 3Finery™, bringing objects to life and non-executive director of Cobra Simulation™ disrupting immersive software.

    Kenny holds a position as full professor and chair of Video Game Technology at Edinburgh Napier University. He earned his PhD and MS from the school of computing, and an honor’s degree in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from Edinburgh University.

    Alan Jeffrey

    Principal Software Engineer
    Recent Publications

    Dr. Jeffrey coordinates the design and implementation of the Luau type system, which helps drive many of the features of development in Roblox Studio.

    Alan has over 30 years of experience with research in programming languages, including publishing papers and serving on the program committees of Principles Of Programming Languages (POPL), International Conference On Functional Programming (ICFP), and Logic In Computer Science (LICS). He has served on the Steering Committee and Organizing Committee of ICFP, and as General Chair of LICS. He has been an active member of open source software projects such as LaTeX, Agda, Servo, and Luau.

    Alan has a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford.

    Mahesh Nandwana

    Principal Machine Learning Scientist
    Recent Publications

    Mahesh leads audio ML projects at Roblox. His areas of expertise include speech and speaker recognition, voice activity detection, audio classification, and speech enhancement.

    Before Roblox, Mahesh was a technical lead in the Siri Perception team at Apple. He also worked as an Advanced Computer Scientist at SRI International and was involved in DARPA RATS and MediFor programs

    He has published more than 20 papers. He has served as a reviewer for conferences and journals including NeurIPS, ICML, ICLR, IEEE/ACM TASLP, Speech Communication, Interspeech, and ICASSP. He earned an MS degree from UT Dallas.

    Linwan Song

    Research Assistant

    Linwan works on open source projects for Roblox Research and helps facilitate technology transfers from Research to Roblox Engineering.

    She completed an undergraduate research assistantship with Prof. Toshiya Hachisuka at the University of Waterloo, as well as internships at Google and Autodesk.

    Linwan holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo.

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    june.rockwell@contr.roblox.com

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  • Roblox Ranks #3 on Fast Company’s Fourth Annual List of the 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators – Roblox Blog

    Roblox Ranks #3 on Fast Company’s Fourth Annual List of the 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators – Roblox Blog

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    For over 16 years, our team at Roblox has been innovating to solve some of the hardest and most interesting technical challenges as we usher in the metaverse. To do this kind of groundbreaking work, we’ve hired top talent with creative and innovative thinking and created a culture that seeks to empower engineering and product teams to be responsible, take the long view, and get stuff done – all while respecting our global community of millions of creators. Today we’re thrilled to share that Fast Company has honored our team with a #3 ranking on their annual list of the 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators.

    Maintaining an innovation-first culture that seeks to empower engineering and product teams is one of our core priorities. Our teams are innovating across an ever-expanding range of areas, including virtual economy, AI and machine learning, social graph, physics, audio, infrastructure, databases, microservices, rendering, and more. Two examples of innovations coming from the team in the past year include: 

    • Layered Clothing, which gave everyone on Roblox complete freedom over what their avatar wears and enabled 360-degree hyperrealism for clothing that’s never been seen before in a virtual environment.
    • A materials upgrade that enhanced the visual quality of our entire existing library of materials to make them look and feel even more realistic than before.  

    “We hear from candidates that they are drawn to the breadth of technical challenges we are solving here at Roblox, from scaling our infrastructure to working on a state-of-the-art physics and rendering engine to enabling more civil communication in shared online spaces and developing groundbreaking developer, avatar and identity features,” said Dan Sturman, Chief Technology Officer at Roblox. “We also hire people who are genuinely excited about building this new category of human co-experience where so much innovation is happening and is bound to continue over the next decades given the opportunity.”

    The Best Workplaces for Innovators list honors organizations and businesses that demonstrate a steadfast commitment to encouraging innovation at all levels. The list ranks 100 winners from a variety of industries, including computer science, biotech, consumer packaged goods, nonprofit, education, financial services, cybersecurity, engineering, diversity, sustainability, B2B, and consumer products and services.    

    “This year’s list of the Best Workplaces for Innovators recognizes organizations that have demonstrated a deep commitment to cultivating creativity across the board,” says Brendan Vaughan, editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “In the face of powerful headwinds, these leaders and teams continue to spur innovation.”   

    We’re continuing to hire for hundreds of open roles to usher in the metaverse and look forward to climbing to the top of this list with all of you. 

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    mmay@roblox.com

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  • Roblox Ranks #3 on Fast Company’s Fourth Annual List of the 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators – Roblox Blog

    Roblox Ranks #3 on Fast Company’s Fourth Annual List of the 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators – Roblox Blog

    [ad_1]

    For over 16 years, our team at Roblox has been innovating to solve some of the hardest and most interesting technical challenges as we usher in the metaverse. To do this kind of groundbreaking work, we’ve hired top talent with creative and innovative thinking and created a culture that seeks to empower engineering and product teams to be responsible, take the long view, and get stuff done – all while respecting our global community of millions of creators. Today we’re thrilled to share that Fast Company has honored our team with a #3 ranking on their annual list of the 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators.

    Maintaining an innovation-first culture that seeks to empower engineering and product teams is one of our core priorities. Our teams are innovating across an ever-expanding range of areas, including virtual economy, AI and machine learning, social graph, physics, audio, infrastructure, databases, microservices, rendering, and more. Two examples of innovations coming from the team in the past year include: 

    • Layered Clothing, which gave everyone on Roblox complete freedom over what their avatar wears and enabled 360-degree hyperrealism for clothing that’s never been seen before in a virtual environment.
    • A materials upgrade that enhanced the visual quality of our entire existing library of materials to make them look and feel even more realistic than before.  

    “We hear from candidates that they are drawn to the breadth of technical challenges we are solving here at Roblox, from scaling our infrastructure to working on a state-of-the-art physics and rendering engine to enabling more civil communication in shared online spaces and developing groundbreaking developer, avatar and identity features,” said Dan Sturman, Chief Technology Officer at Roblox. “We also hire people who are genuinely excited about building this new category of human co-experience where so much innovation is happening and is bound to continue over the next decades given the opportunity.”

    The Best Workplaces for Innovators list honors organizations and businesses that demonstrate a steadfast commitment to encouraging innovation at all levels. The list ranks 100 winners from a variety of industries, including computer science, biotech, consumer packaged goods, nonprofit, education, financial services, cybersecurity, engineering, diversity, sustainability, B2B, and consumer products and services.    

    “This year’s list of the Best Workplaces for Innovators recognizes organizations that have demonstrated a deep commitment to cultivating creativity across the board,” says Brendan Vaughan, editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “In the face of powerful headwinds, these leaders and teams continue to spur innovation.”   

    We’re continuing to hire for hundreds of open roles to usher in the metaverse and look forward to climbing to the top of this list with all of you. 

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    mmay@roblox.com

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  • Introducing Custom Material Variants and New Enhancements to Materials – Roblox Blog

    Introducing Custom Material Variants and New Enhancements to Materials – Roblox Blog

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    On the left is a scene rendered with our old materials. On the right is the same scene with our newly enhanced materials, our Future is Bright lighting technology, and physically-based rendering.

    Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve officially rolled out a number of advancements to our material system, moving them out of beta and into the hands of our broader community.

    With this release, we’ve enhanced the visual quality of our entire existing library of materials, which includes brick, glass, metal, and many other common materials, to make them look and feel even more realistic than before. These material upgrades will be the default option for all new experiences moving forward. Creators can upgrade their existing experiences as they see fit (read our documentation here to learn how), and our classic materials remain available if developers wish to continue using them. In addition, creators now have access to a new, user-friendly Material Manager tool in Roblox Studio allowing them to make custom variations of our base materials to better suit their aesthetic vision. Now, before we dive any deeper into the details, let’s first take a step back and understand what materials are and what makes those on Roblox so unique.

    Materials on Roblox are akin to materials in the real world. They’re used to not only define the surface appearance of a 3D object but also its physical properties (like friction), which influence how the object behaves. For example, if you’re driving a car, the rubber material of the tires should behave as you would expect depending on the surface they’re on—they might skid on wet asphalt, or get stuck in the mud. This level of interactivity is essential to making experiences on Roblox feel like living, breathing worlds.

    Our engineers understand that in order for creators to build best-in-class experiences on our platform, we need to provide them with innovative and powerful tools. So, when we set out to ship all the aforementioned new components to our material system, we had two major goals in mind.

    First, building on the work we’ve done to make physically-based rendering (PBR) available via our Surface Appearance construct, we wanted to provide creators with access to high-quality materials that look and feel as realistic as possible out of the box. So, we built our materials from the ground up to fully utilize PBR, which recreates how light interacts with surfaces by simulating phenomena such as shading, reflections, and shadows in a realistic way.

    What’s more exciting is that by combining these new and enhanced materials with our “Future is Bright” lighting technology, creators can take the visual quality of their experiences to an even higher level.

    Second, in line with our vision to enable a fully user-generated content platform, we also wanted to give people a user-friendly way to create, manage, and apply custom variations of our base materials in Roblox Studio. For example, creators could replace our built-in brick material with their own custom anime-styled brick, making it easy to achieve unique visual styles for their experience. And, because these are variants and not new base materials, they will automatically benefit from future emergent behavior based on the materials’ inherent simulation properties—no extra work required.

    Taking the Long View

    Our upgraded material system will enable creators to take their experiences to new heights while also providing us a foundation we can continue to iterate on. Our vision for materials is to make them an integral part of the development process, giving people even more control over the look and feel of their content without requiring them to write code for behaviors we know to be true in the real world.

    For example, an object made out of wood should catch on fire when it’s exposed to a flame. Rainfall should pool on the ground and gradually seep into porous materials like dirt. Sounds should be muffled when passing through walls. These are the types of things we will enable by default so creators can focus on building engaging experiences rather than worrying about the nitty-gritty technical complexities. Over time, we will also continue adding new base materials with simulation properties to our material library, giving creators an ever-expanding palette to work with as they bring their imaginations to life.

    Our work with materials is never-ending, but with the launch of our new system, we’re excited to empower even more creators to build the most immersive and dynamic experiences possible on Roblox.

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    mmay@roblox.com

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  • Voting Now Open for the Roblox Innovation Awards – Roblox Blog

    Voting Now Open for the Roblox Innovation Awards – Roblox Blog

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    Every day, millions of talented creators across the Roblox community are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible on our platform. They’re building new experiences, experimenting with cutting-edge technologies, and dreaming up ways to connect people from all over the world. And as their ingenuity and imagination has grown, so too has the need to expand our annual awards show to celebrate and recognize their incredible achievements in innovation. And that’s why we’re excited for the evolution of the Bloxys to a new in-person experience called the Roblox Innovation Awards.

    This will be our first-ever in-person awards show, shared virtually from the invite-only Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) on September 10. We’ll also be featuring brand-new award categories such as Best Creative Direction, Best Use of Avatar Fashion, and Best Audio Design.

    In addition to honoring some of the most inventive creators on Roblox, we’re also giving everyone in the community a chance to decide who’ll take home the awards for premier categories including Best Content Update, Video Star of the Year, and more. 

    Jump into the Roblox Innovation Awards Voting Hub now to cast your votes for your favorite nominees. Voting ends at midnight on July 27.

    Developers and creators will need to register in order to attend RDC and the Roblox Innovation Awards. Registration will open up in a couple of weeks to invited guests. If you are interested in staying up to date on RDC news, sign up here to receive future news and announcements via email. 

    We’re excited to celebrate the dazzling talent and unstoppable creativity of our community. Good luck to all of the nominees!

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    mmay@roblox.com

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