Projects I work on involve 3D rendering, physical simulation, and other game-like real-time functionality... but are serious tools rather than games. Other than GD I don't know anywhere that attracts people who know these technologies - posting a job on regular job boards means the vast majority of applicants will be generic programmers, and IMO real-time simulation is something you need to have experience with because there are many areas it's different to developing say a business app.

Any thoughts? Maybe I can take a straw poll - as game developers, would you find it interesting to see jobs advertised on GD for serious software using game-style technology?

Also, does anyone look at GD's formal job page, or only at Help Wanted... all my work is telecommute and uses contractors/freelancers so it's slightly blurred to me which section it should go in.

Finally - is this the right forum for this message? I toyed with putting it in Help Wanted but figured to throw it here to get most views. If a friendly moderator prefers to move it then please go ahead.

John.

You could try all the game-dev related networks on LinkedIn.

Would that be any better than GD though? To clarify slightly, I'm wondering if there are places that might specifically attract developers who are familiar with 3D engines and so on, but are not geared around game development.

Well,a lot of people use GPU for calculations,see gpgpu.org for example.
Also AFAIK there are "graphics" engines specially intended for visualisation 3DMAX (and other editors) scenes and so on.

Quote: Original post by JDX_John
Projects I work on involve 3D rendering, physical simulation, and other game-like real-time functionality... but are serious tools rather than games.

Define serious. Usually mentioning the industry where this will be applied is enough of a distinction. Construction and mechanical engineering implies CAD/CAM/CAE, medical hints at some amount of experience in related IT field due to bureaucracy, military simulations and imply a security clearance and so on.

Quote: Other than GD I don't know anywhere that attracts people who know these technologies - posting a job on regular job boards means the vast majority of applicants will be generic programmers, and IMO real-time simulation is something you need to have experience with because there are many areas it's different to developing say a business app.

Generic programmer == IT code monkey?

Real-time systems engineer is adequate classification. Background in physics can also be used. Experience with numeric simulations or related fields is another. People who worked in car or aerospace industry or were involved with most any kind of engineering simulations are another.

So what exactly is this for?

Quote: Original post by Antheus
Define serious. Usually mentioning the industry where this will be applied is enough of a distinction. Construction and mechanical engineering implies CAD/CAM/CAE, medical hints at some amount of experience in related IT field due to bureaucracy, military simulations and imply a security clearance and so on.

It really is generic... we're not talking immense amounts of specialist domain knowledge, it's using technologies like Ogre and PhysX outside of games.

Quote: Original post by Antheus
Generic programmer == IT code monkey?

Not quite, application developers can be hugely skilled, but there is a lot of background knowledge in terms of basic 3D math, efficiency (not optimisation), debugging, etc, which is different to writing data-base apps or Winforms, etc.

Quote: Original post by Antheus
Real-time systems engineer is adequate classification. Background in physics can also be used. Experience with numeric simulations or related fields is another. People who worked in car or aerospace industry or were involved with most any kind of engineering simulations are another.

Thanks, those are the kind of phrases I want.

Quote: Original post by Antheus
So what exactly is this for?

In this specific case, modelling medical instruments inside the human body. However it's not full-on simulation, I suppose semi-simulation. The way a driving game does some modelling of a vehicle drivetrain but doesn't try to simulate the engine internally or do
non-trivial aero calculations.
One issue is that those who work in hard-core simulation often have a lot of CPU power, the real-time issue is why I believe it's closer to game development. However I don't know a "gameplay programmer" would be quite the right fit since gameplay is more about doing what you have to to "look ok". The closest I know would be someone working as a physics programmer in a game company.

Quote: Original post by JDX_John

In this specific case, modelling medical instruments inside the human body. However it's not full-on simulation, I suppose semi-simulation.

Signal processing.

Quote: The way a driving game does some modelling of a vehicle drivetrain but doesn't try to simulate the engine internally or do non-trivial aero calculations.

Signal processing. Asking what a Z transform is can be a good indicator whether they've at least attended a 101 course in such topics.

Someone with EE degree actively working as programmer in simulation or visualization related topics will likely be best bet for this type of work.

Quote: The closest I know would be someone working as a physics programmer in a game company.

Physics, math or EE degree (or equivalent background) are the all good choices for this type of work. CS may work, but the signal/noise ratio is horrible. The actual coding can then be done be programmers with either specialization into one of APIs (graphics, discrete simulation, numeric simulation), the biggest challenges lie in correctly modeling the problem.

A full CS course will/does include all the required topics for this type of work, but very few actually take it, majority of CS today is IT and similar CRUD-focused degrees.

Good points. My own degree was in math/physics and like most developers I know, I learnt most of my programming before university... and learnt how to write software (big difference) working with other developers later.

I suppose the other question is where people working in these fields hang out and where they find jobs online. I think quite a few people on GD work in non-game fields for a job, some must do simulation-type work.
Are there good forums for communities in such fields? And do jobs in such areas just turn up on the regular development job websites - or like game development are there recruiters and job websites specializing in one area?

Thanks for the help.

You might want to try the physics forums of various well known physics engines.

such as ..

http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/havok/
http://developer.nvidia.com/forums/index.php?showforum=16

Don't know if they allow job postings on there.

From my experience most physics programmers are very domain specific, they won't have the cross specialty for graphics programming and general application programming, it's pretty rare to find someone with such a broad knowledge in addition to a strong physics background.

Good Luck!

-ddn