[gameprogrammer] Re: question about protection of ideas (and protection of source code)
- From: "Peter Mikelsons" <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2011 12:57:31 -1000
IANAL but that sounds like a patent. OTOH it's probably been done before and
making a patent as a little guy is Very Hard. Probably your best hope is to
publish a nice paper for your CV.
-- Peter Mikelsons
On Oct 23, 2011 10:57 AM, Alan Wolfe <alan.wolfe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hey there guys,
I recently had some ideas for helping achieve real time raytracing that I'm
starting to implement in HTML5 of all things. I'm using javascript to
show more dramatically how it improves things, and also make it more accessible
/ cross platform than a stand alone exe.
There are some caveats to what you can and can't do with it (ie certain actions
cause massive slowdown, while others are virtually free) but so far i'm getting
pretty darn good results!
To give you an idea, at 300x300 in a simple scene of 2 spheres, a plane, and 2
point lights, with shadows, reflections (up to 5 bounces) and phong shading,
without my techniques, I get:
IE: about 0.75 fps (1333ms)
Firefox: about 1.5 fps (667ms)
Chrome: about 0.5fps (2000ms)
With my techniques in place:
IE: about 8 fps (125ms)
Firefox: about 7.5fps (133ms)
Chrome: about 38fps (26ms) - yes really!
More complex scenes don't invalidate my techniques, they still works
great. It definitely gets slower with higher resolutions but not
unreasonably so, but for instance, in chrome at 800x600 i still get about
6.5fps on my 3 year old laptop (and i haven't fully implemented everything
yet). I shudder to think what it could do in a native language! (i intend
to port it when finished with the html5 implementation)
Anyhow, what does one do with such ideas? I don't think anyone else has
done what I'm doing before but i could be wrong (i couldnt find anything via
google). Also, my current employer didn't have me sign anything that says
they own all things i create outside the office (unlike previous employers!)
It being javascript, anyone who sees it has access to the code which
presents a problem. Should i put some kind of copyright notice in the
source or something?
I read up a little on patents and it seemed like they were really expensive for
legal fees etc (20k in USA at least). Also, one thing i would hate is to
have come up with a nifty technique, only to have a large company buy it from
me and charge others to use it / prevent others from using it - IE like the
"carmack's reverse" drama.
At the same time, it would be nice to have some credit somehow. Something
to put on my resume (published paper or something?) and ya know... if there is
any money to be made on it without being evil, that would be nice haha.
So, does anyone have any idea what to do in this sort of situation?
Thanks for any insight!
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