Pieter Germishuys

The "GROUP"

What a fantastic bunch of people I met at Tech-Ed Africa 2005.
Armand, Thea, Craig, Kevin, You guys/gal are amazing. Cool, calm, relaxed and really know how to party... believe me.. the 2 - 3am sessions were just totally awesome and the cricket... well what can I say, I'm still taking strain because of it. The rugby also rocked. Hopefully I will have the cool opporunity to meet the "group" again as I have named them as they really showed me what having a good time is all about. "Baie dankie julle dit was rerig baie baie cool en om julle te ontmoet was die highlight vir my".

Tech-Ed Africa 2005 really also gave me alot in the sense of information and I can really see how I could promote Microsoft products amongst game developers. "WorkFlow", Office 12, Avalon, it's just really really cool. I will really look into these packages alot more when the time comes.

Thank you Microsoft
I would just like to say thank you to Microsoft for sponsoring the SADeveloper leads to attend TechEd Africa 2005.
I think it's essential for the leads to come together and I really think that knowing the leads from the other regions personally helps us grow a tight knit community. It's all about socializing and having fun and in the same note being helpfull/informative to the community.

Thank you to Ruari, Lillian and the rest of the Microsoft team who made this possible. I really took alot out of it.

Right now I have to play catchup.

AGP research

I did some research on the AGP bus and how memory gets stored and where it gets stored. It's very interesting to know that some of the things you thought are really true and it all comes into play when you actually look at the hardware pipeline and how AGP manages to do the things it does. Also it's interesting to know that GART (Graphics Address Remapping Table) is the AGP aperture size in your bios config. Here is a little diagram I put together to better explain the article I wrote.

If you have any comments or suggestions please drop me a mail.
Let me just take this opportunity to thank each and everyone of you who visits this site and find it informative. I am still learning how to write articles and tutorials and I am sure it will become better in time and I hope to provide more concise and fuller articles/tutorials the community.

Conceptual Visual Fixed function pipeline

I have created this simple yet easy to follow conceptual fixed function pipeline image. It shows in a very visual way how each stage of the pipeline affects a primitive. I hope to enhance and add more detail to the pipeline but I thought it might be a good idea to get something up on my site as I haven't updated in a couple of days.

if you have any comments or questions please do not hesitate to ask me.

Pipeline - The Research

Myself and some friends have discussed really understanding and learning how to core proper direct3d apps and we have come to some conclusion. It's a great benefit to understanding the inner workings of the hardware pipeline... So I was thinking of posting my research articles here aswell on AGP and maybe in the future PCI-X. Just giving a slight overview of AGP and how the pipeline works. If you haven't come across it yet. Rich has posted his pipeline image. It's really awesome and covers the complete rendering pipeline. If you haven't subscribed to the DirectX discussion group ( DIRECTXDEV@DISCUSS.MICROSOFT.COM ). Do so now. It's a fantastic resource and you get a daily email of all the hot topics of the day.

Stencil Buffers - Reflection tutorial

I have added a tutorial on stencil buffers with emphasis on masking. This is a technique used to mask out the rest of the scene while only objects will be reflected in the mirror. Stencil buffers are great for this since it's easy and simple to use when you want to achieve this effect. If you have any comments, I would love to hear from you and what you think I could add to my site to improve your learning and/or experience.

DirectX 9 SDK - October update - Managed DirectX Tutorials update

I have tested my tutorials with the latest SDK release (DirectX 9 SDK - October Update). They are working fine.

The latest SDK is available from here.

Happy DirectX'ing I am off to get some studying done.

So much to do, so little time.

I am currently writing tests and the end of the month I am going to TechEd, so as a filler I will do my best to get some studying done and write about it... maybe looking at some render states and textures and lighting in the programmable pipeline.

So bare with me as I have alot of work to get through this month.

The Passion the Drive the Community

We have such an awesome group of specialists in this country (South Africa). Not just the leads of our communities (www.sadeveloper.net), (www.saarchitect.net), (www.samidp.com). People striving for the upliftment and the growing of the community and the technological expertise in our country.

We have already seen what the community can do. I was able to goto rAge because of the community and the pure dedication they have. The passion is just fantastic. What I really want to say is that I would like to know what everyone wants from the community? We have this passion and how do we drive this passion to grow the community? I value everyone and just feel like i've found a family. I just want to chat to everyone. What I am going to do over the next couple of weeks is to share everyone's profile (if you don't mind) and just express the gratitude that I have for these fantastic group of people that I have come to enjoy and have the privalege of calling my friends.

As a lead and member of sadeveloper I got to meet so many new people and opportunities started presenting itself such as meeting new people where I was not able to in the past. The meetings that we have are awesome. The people you meet there are so cool, they share knowledge and chat about stuff that you have no clue about but it's really cool otherwise. It's how I learn and I really hope that we can keep this passion going.

Another group of people I would like to thank are the MVP's, your love and compassion towards your fellow members in the community is just fantastic. I am grateful that Microsoft are recognizing the individuals in the community. I really feel inspired by them and not because they are MVP's but the modesty all of them have. They have this attitude that is just really stunning (do you guys get this as a added award, ehehhehe). Thank you guys/gals.

I hope that I can grow with these fantastic people that I have met... The Leads of SADeveloper.net and SAArchitect.net that are helping me on a day to day basis... pushing me into the right direction... I really hope that someday I can be as knowledgable and helpful as you guys/gals. Thank you. The members of these communities are just as extraordinary as the leads who drive them, you guys are the foundation that helps us rely on (if I can say that). I cannot even start to express the passion I have just to talk to everyone and meet new people in the community. If you just want to chat please contact me. I love hearing from people and even more helping people. The motto I try to live by is. "If I can, I will".

Thank you everyone.

rAge 2005 - SADeveloper.net success story.

What an fantastic event. I was only there the friday and saturday but what an awesome group of people. The SA Gamedev community pulled together and had a session on "Breaking into the gaming industry". This was presented by Danny "Dislekcia" Day and Luke Lamothe, both very enthusiastic about the game development scene in South Africa.

Further more I got to meet some very interesting people. For one I got a nice shot with fatal1ty


It was really cool. We even got to talk to some of the guys at IT Intellect about actually getting their Game Development/Design degree out there to the public and creating some awareness around game development in South Africa. We got to setup some really interesting conversations with the community and balls really started rolling. I hope that this is the beginning of a really mutual beneficial collaboration between different communities and SADeveloper.net being one of them being mentioned at the GameDev talk. We were there to give away some Project Firefly bags and talk to Danny to bring the communities together to create some awareness.

Once again thank you to the Leads of SADeveloper.net for pulling together and helping me get to rAge 2005. Also a special thank you for the Plint family for the 5 star accomodation I received while in Johannesburg. It was awesome and thank you Ruari. You really made my year so far. The compassion and dedication you show to helping the community is fantastic and well noted. Thank you once again to the Leads of SADev, you guys/gals are awesome!.