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Graphics and Gaming Group News

New Project and New Researcher

Friday , 4th April 2008

We have a new researcher on board. Leonie Troy is working on a new project jointly funded by the EU SECASE (Software Engineering CASE studies) initiative and ITB. Leonie will be working on developing educational resources targetted at localisation of mobile gaming applications. More information about the project can be found here.

Paper Presentations

Wednesday , 30th January 2008

Towards the end of 2007 our postgraduate students presented two papers on our ongoing work on Procedural City Generation. George Kelly presented a paper entitled CityGen: An Interactive System for Procedural City Generation at the Fifth International Conference on Computer Game Design and Technology in Liverpool back in November. Just before Christmas, Graham Whelan presented Towards Procedural Generation of Buildings for an Interactive City Generation System at the Eurographics Ireland Chapter Workshop in UCD

Research Vanancy

Tuesday , 2nd October 2007

We are still inviting applications for a new research post that is available. The researcher will work on the Virtual Cinematography for Driving Applications Situated in Procedurally Generated 3D Environments project, which we recently obtained funding for. The post is for 2 years and the researcher will register for a research M.Sc. as part of the work. A monthly grant is paid and all fees and related expenses are covered. Full information on the post and details about how to apply can be found on the ITB website. The closing date for applications is October 19th. Please note that this is an extended application date and applications we have received already are still valid.

ITB Selected for Emergent Academic Program

Monday , 24th September 2007

ITB has been selected to become part of Emergent Game Technologies Academic Program. Emergent are the creators of the GameBryo game engine which has been used to create many well-known titles. The Academic Program gives selected institutions full access to Emergent products for research and teaching purposes. This is a fantastic opportunity for the Graphics and Gaming Group as it allows us to conduct research projects using a fully-featured professional game development environment. We look forward to fruitful future collaboration with Emergent.

SIGGRAPH 2007

Monday , 20th August 2007

George Kelly and Graham Whelan recently returned from the SIGGRAPH 2007 conference in San Diego where George presented a poster on his procedural city generation work. The poster can be downloaded here.

New Research Funding Obtained

Monday , 9th July 2007

We are delighted to announce that funding for a new research project has recently been granted. The project will investigate the use of Virtual Cinematography in the context of a procedurally generated urban environment and represents a continuation of various strands of research being carried out here over the last few years. The funding was obtained from the Strand 1 Postgraduate R&D; Skills Programme administered by the Council of Directors of the Institutes of Technology. It will employ one postgraduate researcher for a period of two years and we will be advertising to fill this position in September.

Video Uploads

Tuesday , 15th May 2007

We have just uploaded some new videos demonstrating the current implementations of the Procedural City Generation and Automatic Bulding Generation projects. You can view these videos directly by clicking on the image links to the right. For full information and context please visit the relevant project pages here and here.

Talk by Peter Lynch

Wednesday , 24th April 2007

Peter Lynch, who is CEO of Eirplay Games will be visiting ITB on Tuesday May 1st to give a talk about developing games with Java for mobile devices. It takes place in F025 from 3-4pm and all are welcome to attend.

New Member

Thursday , 7th December 2006

We have another new member of the group. Mark Cummins is a Computing lecturer at ITB who has recently started studying for a Ph.D. under the supervision of Matt Smith. Mark is going be working on the development of serious training games for safety applications.

New Researcher

Monday , 27th November 2006

We have been joined by a new postgraduate researcher, Graham Whelan. Graham is going to be working on the Automatic Building Generation project. Graham is a physics graduate from Trinity College Dublin and also has several years experience working in the UK games industry.

Graphics and Gaming Group at Science Week 2006

Wednesday, 16th November 2006

The Graphics and Gaming Group are contributing to Science Week this week (15th and 16th November) by providing an interactive showcase of computer graphics and games concepts at the ITB campus. Visiting primary and secondary school students will be able to try out hands-on demos of various computer graphics and game applications. These activities were created by Matt Smith. Full details of Science Week at ITB can be found on the main ITB website.

Double Graduation

Wednesday, 15th November 2006

Last Friday we had a double graduation of postgraduate students from the Graphics and Gaming Group. Both James Kneafsey and Ross Graham were conferred with their M.Sc. degrees. Congratulations to Ross and James and we wish them every success in their new careers.

Virtual Cinematography Project Concludes

Friday, 19th October 2006

Our project on virtual cinematography has now concluded. James Kneafsey's thesis describing the work in detail has been submitted and passed and is now available for download from our publications page. Hugh McCabe recently presented a paper describing the results of the project at the Games 2006 Conference in Portugal which you can also access on our publications page.

SIGGRAPH 2006

Monday, 7th August 2006

George Kelly and Hugh McCabe have just returned from the Siggraph 2006 conference in Boston where George presented a research poster on his work. The poster was entitled "Interactive City Generation for Real-Time Applications" and you can download both the poster and the abstract from our publications page. The poster generated a lot of interest from conference delegates. We received a lot of good feedback and made several useful contacts among academics and industry professionals interested in this field. George is currently working on an initial implementation of the work and we hope to have some results available from that soon.

Research Opportunity

Monday, 19th June 2006

We are now looking to take on a postgraduate researcher to work on our new Building Generation for 3D Applications project. This is a two-year paid position and would suit a graduate of Computer Science or a related discipline. The successful applicant will be registered for an M.Sc. degree at ITB and will work closely with the researchers involved in the Procedural City Generation project. For full information about the position and details about how to apply click on the image to the right. Closing date for receipt of applications is Friday July 14th 2006. Applications (a CV and coverering letter expressing interest) should be sent to Ms. Marion Devlin, Development Office, Institute of Technology Blanchardstown, Blanchardstown, Dublin 15.

Graphics and Gaming Group at SIGGRAPH

Friday, 16th June 2006

George Kelly, who works on the Procedural City Generation project, has had a research poster presentation accepted for the SIGGRAPH 2006 conference. This is a great opportunity to discuss and share results on this work with graphics researchers from all around the world. The conference takes place in Boston at the end of July.

New Research Funding Obtained

Monday, 29th May 2006

We are delighted to announce that we have been successful in obtaining funding for a new research project entitled "Automatic Building Generation for 3D Applications". The funding comes from the Strand 1 postgraduate R&D; skills programme and will allow us to employ another postgraduate researcher for a period of two years. The project is designed to complement the existing project on Procedrual City Generation and we hope that the two together will lead to some exciting and interesting results. We will be looking to recruit a new postgraduate researcher for this very soon. Watch this space!

Thank You

Wednesday, 22nd March 2006

Thanks to everyone who helped us out by turning up at the testing day for the Virtual Cinematography project before Christmas. We got lots of useful results and feedback. James is currently finalising his thesis and it should be available for download here soon.

Testing of Virtual Cinematography

Thursday, 8th December 2005

We are looking for volunteers from the ITB staff and student body to help us carry out testing of the new camera system for Quake which our postgrad student, James Kneafsey, has created for the virtual cinematography project. The testing session will take place on Wednesday 14th December between 2 and 4pm. If you think you could spare a half an hour that afternoon please email Hugh. The testing will largely involve getting you to play our modified version of Quake for 20 mintutes or so and blow up as many monsters as possible. What could be easier? Experienced Quake/FPS players and total novices are equally welcome so you've no excuse ...

New Researcher

Thursday, 8th December 2005

We are very pleased to welcome a new researcher to the Graphics and Gaming Group. George Kelly has recently joined us and is going to be working on the Procedural City Generation project for the next two years.

Cinematic Quake Video

Thursday, 24th November 2005

We have just uploaded a short 45 second video showing the Cinematic Quake camera which is currently being built as part of the Virtual Cinematography project. The video shows a segment of Quake gameplay where the standard first-person camera has been replaced with the current implementation of our cinematic camera. The camera automatically chooses different viewpoint and camera angles according to ganeplay events occuring onscreen.. Go here to download it.

Science Week Activities

14th November 2005

The Graphics and Gaming Group are contributing to Science Week this week (14th and 15th November) by providing an interactive showcase of computer graphics and games concepts at the ITB campus. Visiting primary and secondary school students can create their own computer games and view demonstrations of creating artificial gravity for a virtual "ball world", moving around by detecting arrow key presses, and how to make things happen when two "sprites" on screen. These activities were created by Matt Smith. Full details of Science Week at ITB can be found on the main ITB website.

3D Campus Simulation Downloads

26th October 2005

We have just added some downloads from our 3D campus simulation project. These are a VRML world which allows the user to explore the ITB campus through their web browser and a video segment of a flythrough of our 3D campus model. Go here to look at these materials..

New Undergraduate Graphics and Gaming Projects

21st October 2005

A number of our B.Sc. in Computing students have undertaken games related research for their final year projects for the 2005/2006 academic year. Some information about these projects can be found on the undergrad projects page.

Neural Bot Video Downloads

20th October 2005

We have just updated the web page for our recently completed project on neural network learning techniques for agents in games. Included are two videos which can be downloaded showing bots controlled by neural networks navigating their way around some game levels. Go here to download the videos and find out more about the project.

Procedural City Generation for Computer Games

14th September 2005

We have recently been awarded funding for a new research project entitled Procedural City Generation for Computer Games. The funding comes from the Strand 1 Postgraduate R&D; Skills Programme and will allow us to employ a new postgraduate researcher for a period of two years. The idea of the project is to develop techniques for automatically generating urban geometry (e.g. streets, buildings and so on) using procedural techniques for use in computer games and other interactive 3D applications. Recruitment of a new researcher is currently underway and we expect the project to formally commence in November.

DIGRA Conference Vancouver

12th July 2005

Members of the group travelled to Vancouver, Canada in late June to attend the Digital Games Research Association conference. Ross Graham and James Kneafsey presented papers describing their work to the conference attendees. Both were extremely well received and we were particularly pleased that Ross's paper, entitled Realistic Agent Movement in Dynamic Game Environments, was chosen by the conference commitee to appear in the Selected Papers volume for the conference. The papers selected for this volume are regarded by the organisers as representing the best games research currently being carried out worldwide.

Eurographics Ireland Chapter Workshop

20th June 2005

The Graphics and Gaming Group recently hosted the sixth Eurographics Ireland Chapter Workshop at ITB. This took place on June 2nd and consisted of a day of paper presentations from researchers around Ireland involved in Computer Graphics. Presenters came from Trinity College Dublin, Institute of Technology Blanchardstown, University College Cork, University of Ulster, and Dublin City University. An exciting range of work was described, covering areas such as games research, human figure modeling, 3D graphics for mobile devices, and computer graphics for education. Full workshop details can be found on the EGIreland website. Next years workshop is now scheduled to be held at the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.