In an example of a game system, switching to an imaging mode is performed according to an operation performed by a player while a game is being performed. In the imaging mode, a virtual camera in a virtual space is rotated in a roll direction according to an operation performed by the player. In the game system, when rotation of the virtual camera in the roll direction represents a value greater than or equal to a predetermined threshold value, information indicating that 90 degrees rotation is to be performed is stored as rotation information of an image. In the game system, according to an instruction from the player, an image displayed on a screen at a time of the instruction, and the rotation information of the image are stored in a storage medium.

A method for implementing a hybrid scalable CPU/GPU rigid body pipeline. The method includes partitioning a rigid body pipeline into a GPU portion comprising GPU components and a CPU portion comprising CPU components. The method further includes executing the GPU components on the GPU of a computer system, and executing the CPU components on the CPU of the computer system. Communication data dependencies between the CPU and the GPU are managed as the GPU components and the CPU components process through the GPU and the CPU. The method concludes by outputting a resulting processed frame for display.

A processor selectively adjusts the precision of data for different functional units. Specified functional units of the processor, such as shader processing unit of a graphics processing unit (GPU) include a zeroing module to store, based on the states of corresponding precision flags, a data value of zero at specified portion of an input and/or output data operand. The functional unit then processes the data including the zeroed portion. Because a portion of the data has been zeroed, the functional unit consumes less power during data processing. Furthermore, the precision flags are set such that the reduced precision of the data does not significantly impact a user experience.

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for rendering images directly to a video encoder are disclosed. A game engine includes an embedded rendering unit configured to render images in different color spaces depending on the mode. The rendering unit renders images for a first color space only to be driven directly to a display while operating in a first mode. The rendering unit renders images for a second color space only which are provided directly to a video encoder while operating in a second mode. In a third mode, the rendering unit renders images for both color spaces. In one embodiment, the first color space is RGB and the second color space is YUV. The game engine also generates a plurality of attributes associated with each rendered image and the video encoder encodes each rendered image into an encoded bitstream based on the attributes associated with the rendered image.

A video game client on a client device may, for example, be operated by a broadcasting game player, and the client device may capture video generated by a video game client and transmit (e.g., stream) the video to one or more spectators. The video game client may include a local server component, such as a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) server, which executes locally at the client device. The local server component may be employed to provide statistical information from the video game to a local client component, such as a web interface. The statistical information provided by the local server component may be included in one or more visual display items that are generated by the client device. The visual display items may be included in the video that is captured and transmitted by the client device, thereby potentially providing live streaming statistical information to spectators of the video game.

A method of mapping a virtual environment includes: obtaining a first sequence of video images output by a videogame title; obtaining a corresponding sequence of in-game virtual camera positions at which the video images were created; obtaining a corresponding sequence of depth buffer values for a depth buffer used by the videogame whilst creating the video images; and, for each of a plurality of video images and corresponding depth buffer values of the obtained sequences, obtain mapping points corresponding to a selected predetermined set of depth values corresponding to a predetermined set of positions within a respective video image; where for each pair of depth values and video image positions, a mapping point has a distance from the virtual camera position based upon the depth value, and a position based upon the relative positions of the virtual camera and the respective video image position, thereby obtaining a map dataset of mapping points corresponding to the first sequence of video images.

One or more hardware components identify a bottleneck stage within a processor pipeline that processes frames of a video stream. The bottleneck stage has a first clock. An upstream stage receives a feedback signal from the bottleneck stage. The upstream stage has a second clock and the feedback signal includes information as to time required by the bottleneck stage to operate on data and information as to time the data spent queued. The upstream stage adjusts the speed at which the upstream stage operates and queues data to approximate the speed at which the bottleneck stage is operating and queuing data.

A method of detecting significant footage for recording from a videogame comprises obtaining position information for a target object within a virtual environment of the videogame, obtaining depth buffer information for a current position of a virtual camera used to generate a current image of the virtual environment for display by the videogame, calculating a first distance along a line between the current position of the virtual camera and the obtained position of the target object, detecting whether a depth buffer value along the line corresponds to at least a threshold distance from the virtual camera, the threshold distance being based upon the calculated first distance, and if so, associating the current image with an indicator that the image is significant for the purposes of recording footage from the videogame.

A method for automatically applying the optimal configuration for each of a plurality of games to run in a three-dimensional (3D) mode is provided. The method is executed by a computer device. The method includes the step of copying a first configuration file of the game from a first location to a third location in response to a request for one of the games to be launched in the stereoscopic 3D mode. The method further includes the step of overwriting the first configuration file stored in the first location with a second configuration file from a second location. The method further includes the step of causing the game to launch in the stereoscopic 3D mode. The second set of parameter settings is the optimal configuration for the game to run in the stereoscopic 3D mode.

In a multi-GPU simulation environment, frame buffer management may be implemented by multiple GPUs rendering respective frames of video, or by rendering respective portions of each frame of video. One of the GPUs controls HDMI frame output by virtue of receiving frame information from the other GPU(s) and reading out complete frames through a physically connected HDMI output port. Or, the outputs of the GPUs can be multiplexed together.