The WinRT programming environment, which is used to create Metro applications for Windows 8, replaces the old Win32 threading APIs such as CreateThread with a new ThreadPool::RunAsync API. This is generally a good thing (ThreadPool is better than CreateThread for several reasons) but it can be a p…

Over the Christmas break I spent some time porting the built-in XNA effects (BasicEffect, SkinnedEffect, etc.) to native C++ using Direct3D 11. Finding that strangely enjoyable, I went on to make a C++ version of SpriteBatch, and also ported the XNA Primitives 3D sample, built-in state objects, an…

Ok, silliness aside, is it possible to implement an efficient bloom effect on Windows Phone without custom shaders?
Bloom consists of three operations:

Identify which parts of the image should be bloomed

Blur those parts

Combine blurred bloomy bits with the original image

There are many choices f…

Thanks for the comments about what I should write about next. Hopefully I managed to count these more accurately than the Iowa Republican party :-) C++ 16 How GPU's work 11 3D math 10 …

Time for some end-of-year silliness...
Inspired by this recent Twitter exchange:
Scionwest - @shawnhargreaves @nickgravelyn How about post processing for WP7? I've seen people do Bloom effects and thought P.P. was not part of WP7?
nickgravelyn - @Scionwest Shaders aren't available, but I'v…

I have a couple more articles planned about aliasing and motion blur, but am curious to hear where you would like me to take this blog next.
Some topics I am considering:
C++. Dirty secret: although I've mostly blogged about C# programming, much of XNA itself is written in C++, so I've actually …

After six years working on XNA, I decided it was time to take on a new challenge. I am moving to the Windows Phone team, where I will be working on things I'm not sure how much I can say about here (leaking future business plans on MSDN might not be the best way to endear myself to my new boss :-…

Game player: "d00d, teh framerate totally sux0rz!"
Game developer: "we are experiencing aliasing due to low sampling frequency along the temporal axis..."
One of the many decisions that goes into making a game is whether it is better to run at a high framerate, which means drawing many fr…

So far I have written about aliasing in the context of rendering single images, but neglected to consider what happens when we string a series of images together, attempting to create the illusion of smooth motion. Animation introduces the temporal (time) axis, which we sample by rendering frames …

Looking through my backlog of half written articles, I realized I have a couple more topics in my series about antialiasing, which I had entirely forgotten about! Oops...
Actually, though, today is a good day to finish this article. Forget your ghosts, ghouls, and goblins, for I have something R…