Best of 2017

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2017. 64 posts.

Games & Graphics
1

VR

About a month and a half ago I tried the new Oculus and was completely blown away. Even though there were clear rough points – expensive computer, not wireless, limited apps – I was amazed. The next morning I had two thoughts: 1. Because VR games are so physical, gaming will no longer be perceived as an unhealthy…

10

Racing for Realism

At Pixar, pushing the limits of rendering is always a race towards realism, but never at the expense of style. Learn how the talented artists, programmers, and scientists at Pixar are pushing the limits of computer graphics to tell the best possible story.

12

How to Get into VR

This is the second edition of Paths [https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/category/paths/], a series outlining emerging technologies with clear steps on how to get started in each field. This series was designed with makers and aspiring entrepreneurs in mind. We talked to college students interested in engineering…

24

Dolphin Emulator Progress Report

A project cannot survive for nearly fourteen years without making some difficult decisions. Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong, but, to be successful you have to learn from each and every one. One of the most difficult decisions made for Dolphin was the deprecation and removal of D3D9 despite it being the…

26

Beginners Guide to Vulkan

Recently I asked the community for beginner-friendly resources on Vulkan, and I compiled a list of them that you can find below. For the beginners reading this, Vulkan is a new graphics API-- in other words, a way to communicate with your GPU and make it do things. It's managed by the Khronos Group, which means it's…

29

ScummVM 2.0 released

Just in time for the holidays, the final release of ScummVM 2.0 is here! This version adds support for 23 brand new old games, including almost all of the 32-bit Sierra adventures: Cranston Manor Full Pipe Gabriel Knight Gabriel Knight 2 King's Que…

30

Classic NES Series Anti-Emulation Measures

Some of you may remember a series of peculiar Game Boy Advance games that came out over the course of 2004. In stark contrast with the usual dark grey cartridges with colorful labels, a set of light grey cartridges with simple labels were released containing games ported from the original Nintendo Entertainment…