Rendering Engine Architecture Conference (REAC)
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Description
The Rendering Engine Architecture Conference (REAC) is an independent virtual event about the craft of building real-time rendering engines, hosted at enginearchitecture.org. Organized by volunteer industry professionals including Steve McAuley, Angelo Pesce, Natalya Tatarchuk, and Michael Vance, it focuses on architecture, pipelines, tooling, team culture, and product tradeoffs rather than single algorithms.
Talk themes span meshlet pipelines, global illumination, ray tracing integration, resource streaming, shader management, monorepo engine design, and lessons from AAA studios such as Capcom, Ubisoft, Activision, Blizzard, and 4A Games. REAC 2025 drew over two thousand registrants for six live sessions; slides and recordings archive by year on the site.
Advanced engine programmers, rendering leads, and technical directors are the audience. Speakers share reasoning behind choices, not only novel research. The mission emphasizes cross-project design patterns invisible at traditional graphics conferences.
Free online, typically two half-days Pacific time per year with Discord Q&A. REAC skipped 2026 to protect content quality; the next edition is planned for February 2027.
Known among engine architects as a major niche industry event complementing SIGGRAPH and GDC with production-focused rendering-engine craft talks.