Graphics meets Games Competition
Sponsored by
Downloads available!
All the contestant games can now be downloaded. Links for zip files and, if available, project homepages have been added below!
Competition Results!
The audience of Eurographics 2006 voted for the following games to win the 3 prizes:
- First prize: pingK
- Second prize: Cubophobia
- Third prize: Raytrace Effects Car Driving Game
We congratulate the winners!
While novelty was the main criteria to choose the 8 contestants, naturally the "fun factor" of the games had a significant impact on the audience vote. Of course, all 8 contestants, representing the "Best of Graphics meets Games 2006", will remain listed on this webpage, and are referenced in the official Graphics meets Games proceedings handed out to all conference attendees.
The challenge in the Graphics
meets Games competition is to create a
cool new graphics effect that could be useful for a computer game,
and showcase it in a small 3D demo game. A special emphasis lies on
interaction: If the player can interact with the effect or if it
interacts with the environment (i.e., it is more than eye candy),
maybe in some kind of physically based way (such as low-gravity,
magical physics, zero-friction liquids, balls that multiply on
collision, etc.), then all the better.
In response to the call, we received a total of 17 submissions. The
overall quality was very high, and the technical jury was faced with
the tough decision to select a limited number of ``contestants'' for
the final round of the competition. According to the call, the main
selection criterion was the novelty and the interactivity of the
shown effect(s). As a result, 8 contestants showing outstanding
novelty were chosen to be showcased on a large screen on the games
showfloor.
Out of the 8 contestants, the audience chose the games that show
the coolest graphical effects and, most importantly, were fun to
play around with. The winners
were awarded with prizes sponsored by NVIDIA
and the EU GameTools project!
Kam Wong, Hector Rodriguez
This work takes the simultaneous
juxtaposition of multiple points of
view one step further by enabling two users interactively and
jointly to determine the perspective of an image in real time. Each
user interactively moves a separate virtual character inside a
virtual room. The system then calculates an average of the points of
view of the two individual characters and produces an image that
combines both perspectives into one. In this work, vision is not
merely an individual achievement. It is a joint, collaborative
accomplishment produced in real time.
Anton Frühstück, Heinrich Fink
You are a ball -
you are trapped in a cube - you do not remember
when and why this happened. Strange things happen in this cube, so
you decide to escape...
Alexander Kusternig, Chris Chiu, Georg Semanek
This game takes Pong and creates a
different gameplay experience by
adding rotational physics that might not be realistic, but they are
fun! Various powerups also add a slight twist to the classical Pong
gameplay! Enjoy new matches that were never possible in the original
Pong!
Raytrace Effects Car Driving Game
[
zip
]
Tamás Umenhoffer, László
Szirmay-Kalos, Balázs Tóth, László Szécsi
This is a small demo program showing raytrace-like
effects such as
reflections, refractions, caustics and diffuse reflections. The
program uses the OGRE 3D graphics engine and the PhysX physics
engine.
"RealMatter" Soft Body Character Dynamics
[
zip,
homepage
]
Alec Rivers, David Rosen, Aubrey Serr
This is a demo of a soft body physics engine that can simulate bending,
twisting, tearing and breaking soft materials, such as rubber and flesh. The
first two scenes included in the demo show off the high speed of our system,
and are mostly non-interactive. The third demo lets the user slice, dice,
and rip apart a zombie with full gore effects, and demonstrates how this
technology might look in future video games.
Stepan Hrbek, Petr Stastny
Bugs sneak in dark corners.
Hunt them! (In fact, they are Space
Invaders!) The presented effect is global illumination computed in
real time. Think about bug behaviour, it's possible only with
realtime radiosity.
Jorik Blaas, Edwin Jakobs
This highly interactive game contains a
playful combination of rigid
body dynamics and musical synchronization. The user can experiment
by linking the instruments from a musical score directly to forces
and torques on the bodyparts of a 3D model. Robot dancer uses an
innovative user interface to present the wealth of information
generated by the music clearly.
Alistair Brown
Shell Shock is a demo game to
showcase a new method of visualising
explosions in real-time. The user aims and fires an artillery turret
that upon impact creates a massive explosion. The explosions are
physically simulated using smoothed particle hydrodynamics, and are
visualised using a new technique, semi-screen space iso-surface
rendering. Other effecs such as volumetric glow and a shockwave that
refracts light also add to the realism.