Lecture rambling

I'm currently finishing up my preparations for an introductory lecture on rendering engine design, which is a follow-up to one I had a while back on OpenGL. Surprisingly, it's actually been trickier to prepare for this one, despite the fact that I supposedly know more about this subject. However, while the previous one was about a well-defined API and its mathematical underpinnings, this one is about best practices, common design patterns and other even more intangible knowledge gathered from experience. Success and failure aren't objectively measurable in the same ways here.

This has made it rather tricky to prepare the slides for the lecture, something I otherwise find both fun and easy. There's just no clear, linear path available to take me through a substantial amount of the area to be covered. In fact, the material is so self-referential that I'm finding myself wishing for goto in Impress.

What I will try to do is steer it towards more of a discussion between me and the audience, rather than just having me stand there presenting my preferences. I'm hoping that a few other sceners will be attending, which should help to make the discussion more nuanced (but hopefully not too advanced for the people who came for the promised introduction).

Oh well, I'm off to the campus to finish my slides.