Delta Engine Blog

This is the last day of the MVP Summit. There will be one more post of tomorrows trip back to Germany, but it will probably be short. Today was not as interesting as the past few days because the Keynotes were pretty general. I wanted to see one of the side sessions, but it was exactly at lunch time when all XNA MVPs met up, which was way more important. Chuck Walbourn from the DirectX team (now called Windows Gaming Experience (WGX), which sounds strange IMO) did a great afternoon talk to any XNA/DirectX MVPs interested in DirectX11. This just made this day a great ending for the whole conference.

Since I was video chatting, blogging, emailing, etc. all morning I left the hotel a little later, the first keynote session was not so important for me. Later keynotes were not much better because I just don't like a presenter talking to serveral hundered guys and speaking slowly about some technology I probably don't have much impact on. I much rather watch those things online where I can skip over the boring parts :)

So instead I walked to the conference (which was at the Hyatt hotel again like in the first day) and took some pictures of Bellevue. As you can see not everything is Microsoft here, there are some other companies like Expedia located here.

But if you turn your head you can spot Microsoft pretty quickly again.

That big long building is the Westin hotel south of the Hyatt. From this angle looks very thin, but from the other side it is pretty large.

I like all these skyscrapers, maybe I should do a game with some buildings like these ^^

There is the Hyatt hotel where all the keynotes and side sessions are today. Pretty good weather today btw, I just had a T-Shirt and my new MVP jacket on.

These so called sky walkways are pretty useful because it takes forever until a light turns green here and you have to push a button at every single trafic light cross road section.

I just saw a little of the second keynote and then met some XNA MVPs, which were easy to spot because of our XNA MVP jackets we got from the XNA team. We then saw the last keynotes about clouds and hardware, software, etc. which was a bit better than the previous keynotes, but still very general (not a programmer session).

After that all the XNA MVPs met at the so called Farewell Lunch again. As usual lots of stories were traded and the food was very good.

After the lunch we took a few quick pictures of the group, which I can probably link up here later (I did not take a group foto except for this one because the other guys cameras are just much better at those things).

There was 45 minutes of free time between the lunch and the DirectX11 talk from Chuck, so I checked out the mall here.

As usual lots of schicki-micki shops here (thats what we say in Germany to way over the top fancy shops). Other than a Game Stop I could not found anything interesting here.

At the other side of the mall you could get back to the hotels via one of those sky walkways.

The directions were pretty confusing, but once I was on the right track I finally found the way back to the hotels for the last MVP session this year.

We had to wait a little because Chuck was hold up in traffic. I shot some extra pictures from the Cinema upstairs.

This are all the movies at this cinema, nothing to overly exciting I have not seen yet.

The last hardcore XNA/DirectX MVPs like Matt, Richard, Roy, Michael and a few others were listening to the DirectX11 presentations Chuck gave us quickly.

Chuck is talking fearlessly about all the cool new stuff and tricks in DirectX11. Most of those presentations and talks will be released publicly after the GDC in a few weeks, so stay tuned and check Chucks blog for that.

Time fly by and it is already late, time to head back and have a last look at Bellevue at night.

Pretty lights everywhere.

This little boy gives me the impression that he is trapped in there. But he is probably just pissing off his mom because in there it is much more amazing then out here.

Okay, thats it for today. I am really tired and will just watch some VODs this evening and read some websites. Tomorrow the long trip back to Germany will happen and I'm not sure that I will catch any sleep on the plane ..