Less is More: Rendering for Esports

SIGGRAPH 2023 Frontiers Workshop · August 7, 2023

This workshop examined whether SIGGRAPH should pivot since “esports players turn off many of the rendering techniques” because they fail to improve competitive performance. The agenda covered alternatives to photorealism and trading off temporal and visual accuracy. Organizers aimed to balance visual fidelity with competitive fairness.

The format emphasized participant discussion, fomented by short provocative talks. The workshop featured three featured academic talks and summarized feedback from participating researchers and professionals, outlining upcoming conference initiatives.

As noted by the authors: “Computer graphics research has long prioritized image quality over frame rate.” Building on that observation, the publication addresses the modern shift toward performance optimization, captures workshop dialogues, and proposes new academic inquiries to guide future development in competitive gaming graphics.

Publication

This workshop led to a journal publication in IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (March 27, 2024):

• Authors: Benjamin Watson, Josef Spjut, Joohwan Kim, Byungjoo Lee, Mijin Yoo, Peter Shirley, and Rulon Raymond
• IEEE Xplore: DOI: 10.1145/10478358
• NVIDIA Research: Publication page