Comment by Agentlien
10 hours ago
> the number of people who get to work on shipping code where ring-0 knowledge is useful has to be minuscule as a percentage
I wonder if it it is more that the percentage of people who choose to dedicate themselves to that type of work is miniscule. I work in graphics and performance, and it seems similar.
Few people really work on it specifically at any given company, and I've heard people warn others that there are few jobs in it.
But video game companies really want people for those roles and will pay well because they're hard to find. Still, few programmers show any interest in specializing in those skills. If you're passionate about it and willing to learn the details you'll eventually find a lot of job opportunities. I know people who want to work with this and do so - I know many more who have specifically said they want to stay away from it. I don't know anyone who wants to and can't.
How would one start learning about it?
Before listing resources, let me state that the single most important thing is to learn by doing. Write a lot of rendering code, experiment a lot with your own ideas and variations on each exercise. Once you move past the basics don't be afraid to spend several evenings in a row failing to fix what in hindsight seems like an embarrassingly simple math error. That is how you go from having read and sort of understood something to really knowing it. Also, the best approach is usually to devour as much content as you can from several sources to get a wider perspective.
There are a lot of great resources out there. The best modern beginner friendly resource I am aware of is Scratchapixel[0]. Back when I was first learning 3D I used to follow tutorials on places like NeHe Productions[1], which is probably a bit dated these days.
For more comprehensive information on all kinds of techniques, with examples from big games for each technique, the absolutely best resource is the book Real-Time Rendering[2].
If you're interested in ray-tracing rather than rasterization (i.e. more film than video games) a lot of people recommend "Ray Tracing in One Weekend"[3]. If you want to learn state of the art ray-tracing in depth, with all the math and and theory, the best resource is "Physically Based Rendering: From Theory to Implementation"[4], which is freely available online.
[0] https://www.scratchapixel.com/
[1] https://nehe.gamedev.net/
[2] https://www.realtimerendering.com/
[3] https://raytracing.github.io/
[4] https://www.pbrt.org/
If you want to learn more about how computers work I would recommend the following:
- The OS Dev wiki - Open Source Firmware Conference — TKey (shameless plug) - Tiny Tapeout - wafer.space
In rough hierarchical order from software to metal.