Sun, 29 Dec 2024 19:34:19 GMThttps://marekfiser.comMarek's blogMarek's blog about game dev, computer graphics, programming, and fractals!Marek Fiserblog@marekfiser.comIOException: SuccessSun, 29 Dec 2024https://marekfiser.com/blog/io-exception-successMarek Fiserblog@marekfiser.comSome time ago, I encountered and resolved a truly bizarre issue: certain players were unable to save their game due to an IOException with the error message "Success". To this day, I still receive inquiries from fellow devs about how to address this problem. This article documents the issue and provides a reference for the workaround.Is 16.7 million colors enough?Mon, 05 Jan 2015https://marekfiser.com/blog/is-16m-colors-enoughMarek Fiserblog@marekfiser.comMajority of our devices today can display 16.7 million colors. This may sound as a lot but sometimes human eye can notice a difference between two neighboring colors. I have encountered this problem while creating some fractal images. The solution to the limitation is usage of dithering. This article describes the problem and presents a simple solution.Mausr - Marek's Unicode Symbols RecognizerMon, 01 Dec 2014https://marekfiser.com/projects/mausr-mareks-unicode-symbols-recognizerMarek Fiserblog@marekfiser.comMausr is a library and web interface that performs unicode symbols recognition from hand drawn input using simple neural network. The symbol recognition library is written from scratch without any ML library and it implements back-propagation learning algorithm as well as basic non-linear optimization algorithms such as gradient descent and iRprop.Internship at NVIDIA 2014Mon, 01 Sep 2014https://marekfiser.com/blog/internship-at-NVIDIA-2014Marek Fiserblog@marekfiser.comI spent summer of 2014 as an intern at the NVIDIA. That was quite different experience than the last year in the Google. This article describes all the aspects of being an intern in the Silicon Valley including tips how to prepare for such adventure. A big part of the summer was a road trip from Indiana to California and back and I will talk about it as well. After I returned everybody keep asking me: What is better, NVIDIA or Google? You can find out my personal opinion in the post!Mamex - Marek's Mandelbrot explorerFri, 01 Aug 2014https://marekfiser.com/projects/mamex-mareks-mandelbrot-explorerMarek Fiserblog@marekfiser.comMamex is a Mandelbrot set rendering library written in C# and supports arbitrary precision (provided by GMP) for infinite zoom. The explorer can visualize Mandelbrot and Julia sets and has many additional features such as interactive color gradient editor, projections support, and batch rendering. Custom anti-aliasing algorithm, sharpening, and color dithering algorithms yields beautiful results.Internship at Google 2013Sun, 01 Sep 2013https://marekfiser.com/blog/internship-at-Google-2013Marek Fiserblog@marekfiser.comIn the summer of 2013 I had an opportunity to be a part of the Google for whole 14 weeks. This article tells the whole story starting from the application process describing all my great experience. I was interning at Google Headquarters in sunny California and I was member of Google Research team. This article is accompanied with around 100 images from Google campus and surrounding areas.Realtime visualization of 3D vector fields using CUDAMon, 01 Apr 2013https://marekfiser.com/projects/realtime-visualization-of-3D-vector-fields-using-CUDAMarek Fiserblog@marekfiser.comThis project demonstrates visualization techniques like glyphs, stream lines, stream tubes, and stream surfaces — all done in real time. The key is RK4 integrator implemented using CUDA that is uses very fast texture lookup functions to access a vector field. This article contains more than 100 images and figures, commented code snippets, and source code available for download.Conway's Game of Life on GPU using CUDAFri, 01 Mar 2013https://marekfiser.com/projects/conways-game-of-life-on-gpu-using-cudaMarek Fiserblog@marekfiser.comThis project compares performance of CPU and GPU in evaluation of famous Conway's Game of Life. The performance was tested on three different implementations. The most sophisticated version of the algorithm on GPU stores data in one bit-per-cell array and leads to speed-up of 480x compared to serial CPU algorithm. The best implementation for CPU turned out to be lookup-table approach leading to 60x speedups over serial CPU. The report contains detailed explanation of used algorithms, measurements, and code of whole project for download.Random faults algorithm applied to sphere on GPU using CUDAFri, 01 Feb 2013https://marekfiser.com/projects/random-faults-algorithm-applied-to-sphere-on-gpu-using-cudaMarek Fiserblog@marekfiser.comComparison of performance of CPU and GPU implementations of random faults algorithm for random terrain generation. Speedup of GPU over CPU is over 700x. Project uses shared VBO's to avoid CPU-GPU data transfer which makes it an interactive experience.Maraytr - Marek's Ray-tracerTue, 22 Jan 2013https://marekfiser.com/projects/maraytr-mareks-ray-tracerMarek Fiserblog@marekfiser.comMaraytr is a ray-tracer written with high focus on algorithms and data structures rather than on performance. I decided to make it to get deeper understanding of theory and math behind ray-tracing. Also, ray-tracing is fun! The core was written in four days in C# without any third-party libraries. The scene is represented as Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) and supported primitives are sphere, cube, and plane. It is possible to do basic boolean operations like union, intersection, subtraction, or xor.