James Rogers

Principal Technical Art Director @ Xbox Advanced Technology Group, Microsoft. Personal account.

[James Rogers @softmonkey]

@KemiBadenoch I read the first item as a new government-run insurance scheme if you want to go hiking. My blood boiled for half a second before realizing my misread... but not so crazy for this government to implement.

[Lulu Cheng Meservey @lulumeservey]

Team Xbox — some are you are asking how much it matters that Asha doesn’t have gaming experience

Some thoughts since I’ve been there:

I had never worked in gaming when I joined Activision Blizzard’s board and later became CCO & EVP Corp Comms. And although I’d played games, I wasn’t very good

The learning curve was huge. I had to quickly understand the products and players. Gaming culture is unique, and it’s not just one culture! COD vs WOW have very different communities. Launching DIV was totally different from Overwatch work

Getting up to speed took a ton of listening and learning (often the hard way, because while you’re figuring things out you still have to Do Your Job). It involved visiting studios, DMing with streamers, talking to devs, and lots of reps getting absolutely murked in Modern Warfare II

The players made a huge huge difference. I learned from so many of you, whether you were sharing feedback or meeting up at BlizzCon or cooking me on twitter (tough crowd, strong feelings - never change!)

Also - while I def didn’t have the “right” resume or a background in gaming, I did know how to communicate, negotiate, get creative, take care of people, and, when needed, fire shots

I still made plenty mistakes. But my point is that skills from other jobs do transfer. Even though there is a LOT to learn for someone without a gaming background, it IS learnable

Asha is smart, effective, and a fast learner. She has no ego, just wants to get the job done. Playing lots of games in a short period is her way of preparing as best she can, and she shouldn’t be put down for that

She’s determined to make Xbox the best it’s ever been, from the foundation built by Phil and Sarah and their team. If I could’ve stayed after our acquisition, I’d be super excited right now to work for Asha!

I will forever be grateful for all of you who welcomed me to the community and gave me advice and encouragement (even as I was far from perfect)

I hope you’ll give Asha that opportunity to load in, learn, and show what she can do

Don’t judge the resume, judge the K/D 💚

[James Rogers @softmonkey]

@SebAaltonen I did the same with Odin+Dawn bindings (unfortunately wgpu isn't keeping up with features I need). Works well locally for debug/profiling and easy to compile to wasm targets.

[DirectX 12 @DirectX12]

Great news for PC gamers! Shader compilation pain is over. Find out more here: https://t.co/YEABbqsxRQ

[James Rogers @softmonkey]

Cleaning day... Nice find amongst my CD collection! XSI EXP was the HL2 content modding tool of choice for many - good times!

[Plasticity @getPlasticity]

Plasticity just got better. Plasticity v2025.1 is out NOW. New UI, better surfacing tools, and much more.

Surface and Solid Modeling, Redefined.

For more information about Plasticity, visit https://t.co/x30u1lWIlc

For more information about this release, visit https://t.co/ZQmMNFpNPR.

#cadforartists #plasticity3d #plasticity2025

[James Rogers @softmonkey]

AVIF also supports layers, so you can store multiple textures in a single file at different resolutions. In my testing there's a regular RGB color layer and a bunch of single channel layers for other PBR maps. Useful if you want to avoid engine specific channel packing convention.

[James Rogers @softmonkey]

The peak of musical performances: The Three Tenors In Concert, Rome 1990.

[Karl Zylinski @karl_zylinski]

I am now a maintainer of Odin examples repository: https://t.co/bZm2JB56eu

The goal: Provide high-quality, idiomatic Odin examples.

Is there a specific example you'd love to see? Let me know!

If you have experience with Odin and want to share something: Please make a PR! 💖

[Forza Motorsport @ForzaMotorsport]

Ray Traced Global Illumination (RTGI) is now available for PC players on #ForzaMotorsport.

RTGI uses ray tracing hardware to compute more accurate indirect lighting and occlusion across the track and car in real time.

Here’s how you can enable it on PC: https://t.co/uIiVQ5hTGN

[DirectX 12 @DirectX12]

We released a new version of PIX today! 🎉 It includes new texture visualizer improvements (including the ability to write custom shaders to view buffers as textures), a preview of work graph shader debugging, and many timing capture improvements: https://t.co/t2C430v1xG

[James Rogers @softmonkey]

https://t.co/dk3hGapfFn

[Karl Zylinski @karl_zylinski]

My eBook "Understanding the Odin Programming Language" will release on December 6!

Book features:
- Informal intro the language
- Lots of good-to-knows I have acquired over the years
- Enlightening "under the hood" explorations
- An introduction to manual memory management

[James Rogers @softmonkey]

@EmpireAntsGame This level is beautiful. Watch out for moving shadows.
HDR support soon?

[J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling]

You can keep telling yourself this, but you're simply wrong. I'm a left-leaning liberal who's fiercely anti-authoritarian, and if you couldn't deduce that from my work you haven't understood a word of it.

I'm not an ideologue. I mistrust ideologies. I've never met an ideologue who wasn't prepared to deny a bit of inconvenient truth to keep their world view intact and I include ideologies with which I find myself in broad sympathy. On the other hand, I am an idealist. I believe in human beings. We are undeniably capable of terrible acts, but the evidence is that we are astoundingly collaborative and mutually supportive, especially when times are hard.

My values haven't changed; what's changed is the political landscape. What was once my natural home (a pragmatic centre-left party focused on dealing with economic disparity, championing social liberalism and equal rights) is now dominated by an illiberal, identity-based strain of politics I consider elitist, harmful and out of touch with the day-to-day concerns of regular people, particularly women (and I've still lived more than half of my life as a non-wealthy woman, and some of that time was spent in poverty).

There are women with whom I make common cause in the TERF wars I disagree with on other things. Within obvious limits (sucking up to literal Nazis) I don't particularly care about their personal politics. The reality is that there's currently an assault on women's rights unparalleled in my lifetime, and it's coming from both left and right. If ever there was a time for women across the political spectrum to come together, it is now.

[James Rogers @softmonkey]

Only an hour into @EmpireAntsGame and having a blast exploring the world #antlife.
Well done to the dev team. Go check it out!
Feels like a spiritual successor to our old Xbox Insects demo.

[James Rogers @softmonkey]

@HSVSphere 1/20 for the boombox

[Nico M. @nico_m__]

For folks with Xbox Developer Account access, the recordings from our recent Xbox Dev Days conference have been published, including several from myself!

The new https://t.co/8KS9N8A2p8 portal includes these in the "Events" tab (must sign in to view).

[James Rogers @softmonkey]

A sad tragedy

[The Telegraph @Telegraph]

All remaining hereditary peers will be removed from the House of Lords next summer, ministers announced as they said the “accident of birth” should not give people the right to make laws

Should hereditary peers be removed from the House of Lords?

More: https://t.co/Cx7J9KgMav

[James Rogers @softmonkey]

@TheGingerBill "Hot" because unlike MW you have a take (on collapsing a wave function)?