MSc High-performance Graphics And Games Engineering

By studying this Masters degree, you’ll be well placed to join one of the most performance-driven applications of computer science – the multi-billion pound global games industry. As a graduate, you will work at the top-end of the games industry and will develop computer graphics on high-performance platforms, or write engines for the next generation of games.

Developed in collaboration with a prestigious steering group, this course will build on your computer science knowledge to specialise in computer graphics, where programmers must push computing resources to the limit, using deep understanding of architecture and high-performance programming to generate new levels of graphical realism and visual effects on cutting-edge hardware platforms.

You’ll gain proficiency in low-level programming, a thorough understanding of multi-core and many-core programming techniques, game engine and tool development techniques, and fundamental insight into graphics and the practical techniques used in games.

Designed to meet the needs of industry

You can be sure that what you learn will be the technical skills required by industry as this course has been developed in collaboration with a prestigious steering group from industry comprising:
– Barog Game Labs
– Double Eleven
– Epic Games
– NVIDIA
– Team 17
– Sumo Digital
– Weaseltron.

Members of our steering group will contribute to the delivery of the course ensuring that you learn the latest industry developments. You’ll also have the opportunity to engage directly with the games industry, through:

• co-curricula industry lectures

• visits to games development companies

• attending UK games events.

We are also a member of Game Republic, which is an industry-led professional games network that supports and promotes the Yorkshire and Northern England games sector. We hope that students of this course will take part in the Game Republic student showcase.

Course highlights

• Our courses are shaped by our world-leading research in areas such as artificial intelligence, computational science and engineering, computational medicine and distributed systems.

• We’re a partner of the Alan Turing Institute, the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence.

• During your project work you will access specialist facilities and laboratories in the brand new Sir William Henry Bragg Building.

• Benefit from close links with the games industry, including input from our industrial steering group and the opportunity to participate in the annual Game Republic student showcase

Specialist facilities

You will use workstations with high-end GPUs to act as DirectX12 and Vulkan games development platforms and have access to other specialist hardware including the latest Virtual Reality headsets for experimenting on. For learning games engine design and exploring new rendering techniques, students will build their own game engine from scratch.

Programme team

You will be taught by a team of academics and researchers who are actively engaged in cutting-edge research and part of the Visualization and Computer Graphics research group.