Glacier: Platform Adaptability and Performance Lessons from '007 First Light'

Tuesday, August 25, 2026 12:15 PM to 1:15 PM · 1 hr. (Europe/Berlin)
Stage 3 - Confex Level 1
Talk
~All~Tech & Coding

Information

IO Interactive has built its games on Glacier, our own in-house engine, for over 25 years. This talk is a look under the hood at the engine behind 007 First Light.

We'll cover where Glacier came from, how it's architected, and why that architecture gives our teams the speed and scale to build games effectively — including the workflows and collaboration features our developers use every day. Then we'll get into the tech we built specifically for 007 First Light.

We finish on Nintendo Switch 2: how the adaptation is going, with some footage. The Switch 2 demo is playable at the Nintendo booth this week.


Topics
~All~Tech & Coding
Track
Tech & Coding
Session Type
Talk
Target Audiences
programmers and devs
Experience Level
Intermediate
Key Take Aways
- Understand how 007 First Light scaled across platforms without rewriting the engine - Learn concrete GPU optimization strategies from 007 First Light’s most demanding scenes - See how we kept CPU performance stable in 007 First Light’s “living world” - Understand the real cost of upgrading animation systems mid-evolution - Walk away with practical patterns for evolving a 20-year-old engine
Available to Ticket Type(s)
  • gcdev Student Pass
    • gcdev Content Pass
      • gcdev Trade Pass
        • gcdev Press Pass
          • gcdev Speaker Pass
            • gcdev VIP Pass

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