At this years Game Developers Conference, attendees were wowed by Epic Games Samaritan presentation, a sneak peak at the visual fidelity achievable with Unreal Engine 3 and the horsepower of three NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards. Offering a world first look at a real-time demonstration constructed entirely in DirectX 11, Epics Samaritan demo set tongues wagging, and served as a wake-up call for those in the industry still languishing in the dark ages of DirectX 9.
In the opening frames of the demo, one of the most talked-about advancements is shown. Known as Bokeh Depth of Field, it is an upgrade to the standard out-of-focus blurring seen in games of recent years, but has in fact existed for over a decade, having been demonstrated by the now-defunct 3dfx using their famed Voodoo T-Buffer in 1999. The Bokeh component of the new technology relates to the out-of-focus, definable shapes seen in television and film, which are typically used to enhance the mood or visual quality of a scene. Derived from the Japanese word "boke," which literally means "blur," Epic Games Martin Mittring believes that the effect is far more than mere obfuscation, in that "it allows you to lead the viewers attention and creates depth," an effect that is "very important for storytelling, which is an integral part of todays games." Mittring, Epic Games Senior Graphics Architect, also believes that "this effect can be distracting," but, "in some situations it can be used to improve aesthetic quality, like when aiming through a weapon."
