79: Chapter 79 Jiang Yuan: You're working so hard, does your family own a mine?

After handling the matters over at the programming department,

Jiang Yuan returned to her office and, without even a moment to rest, began dealing with another urgent matter: recruiting for the engine team.

Qin Gong had already screened two rounds of resumes, and eight people had finally made the shortlist.

Today, Jiang Yuan was going to personally interview three of them.

These three were interviewing for technical lead positions in the engine department, so naturally, she, as the company's top leader and the engine's creator, needed to personally vet them.

The reason she was interviewing for this role wasn't because she, the engine's "creator," wanted to slack off, but because as the company head, she had too many things to handle every day and was truly overwhelmed.

She carefully went through the resumes Qin Gong had sent over.

When it was about time, Jiang Yuan headed to the interview area, prepared to meet today's three candidates.

If everything went as planned,

The head of the Spark Games engine department would likely be chosen from these three. If none of them were suitable, the top position in the engine department might remain vacant for a long time.

Today's first interviewee was a middle-aged man in his thirties named Yan Yu, and his resume looked very impressive.

He held a bachelor's degree in computer science from Shuimu University and a master's degree from a prestigious overseas university. He had worked as a rendering engineer at a well-known international game company for five years and had participated in the development of three AAA titles.

Jiang Yuan looked at Yan Yu as he walked in calmly and asked with a composed expression:

"Mr. Yan, your resume is very outstanding, but I have a few questions I'd like to ask."

A hint of surprise flashed in Yan Yu's eyes as they swept over Jiang Yuan's exquisitely beautiful face. Not daring to stare, he quickly sat up straight and said solemnly:

"Please, go ahead."

"In your previous company, you were responsible for optimizing the rendering pipeline."

"I want to know your thoughts on the impact of Virtual Geometry technology on the traditional rendering pipeline in the current industry."

Yan Yu was slightly stunned to hear this, clearly not expecting the boss of a game company to ask such a cutting-edge question.

However, he quickly adjusted and answered clearly:

"Virtual Geometry is indeed a revolutionary concept; it essentially solves the performance bottleneck caused by model polygon counts. But from an engineering perspective, it also places high demands on the asset pipeline and hardware bandwidth."

"Personally, I believe that at this stage, focusing on LOD optimization and the deep application of Mesh Shaders on top of the traditional pipeline offers better cost-effectiveness. Virtual Geometry can be tracked as a long-term technical reserve, but we shouldn't rush to replace everything with it."

After listening, Jiang Yuan frowned slightly and continued to ask:

"Then what if I told you that we plan to implement similar or even more efficient rendering capabilities in our self-developed engine, and we need to design the architecture from scratch? As a technical lead, how would you lead the team to push this forward?"

Yan Yu fell silent for a moment before saying sincerely:

"President Jiang, to be honest, designing a system comparable to Nanite from scratch involves too long a cycle and too much risk. My approach would be to start with deep customization based on existing open-source solutions, and then gradually replace the underlying modules after the core scenarios are functional. This way, we can control risks while allowing the team to see results quickly."

Jiang Yuan gave a soft hum of acknowledgment, said nothing, and didn't press further.

After the interview ended.

Jiang Yuan shook her head and drew an "X" behind Yan Yu's name on the paper in front of her.

This man certainly had the technical skills, but as for being the person in charge of the Aurora Engine, Jiang Yuan felt he was lacking something.

Although every iteration of the Aurora Engine would certainly be carried out under her leadership and guidance.

But as mentioned before, Jiang Yuan was too busy; she couldn't hire a puppet to be the head of such an important engine department.

In other words, it wasn't that Yan Yu wasn't good, but that he wasn't good enough.

Not long after, the second interviewee walked in.

His name was Xie Yunfan, twenty-eight years old, a well-known technical uploader on Bilibili who frequently posted popular science videos related to graphics technology. He was somewhat famous in the circle.

He graduated from a well-known foreign university. Although he lacked a big-company background, his own open-source projects were thriving, with several projects on GitHub boasting over a thousand stars.

Watching him until he sat down, Jiang Yuan twirled the pen in her hand and asked calmly:

"Mr. Xie, I watched a few videos you posted on Bilibili yesterday about several implementation schemes for Real-time Global Illumination."

"At the end of the video, you mentioned that all existing solutions have their own flaws, and to achieve truly perfect global illumination, it might take at least another five years?"

Hearing this, Xie Yunfan's eyes lit up, and he immediately replied without hesitation:

"Yes, I believe the core problem with Real-time Global Illumination is the amount of computation!"

"Every bounce of light in a scene needs to be calculated, and the more complex the scene, the more the computational load grows exponentially. Current hardware levels are far from enough unless someone makes a revolutionary breakthrough at the algorithmic level."

With a slight smile, Jiang Yuan's pink lips parted as she asked cheerfully:

"Then what if someone has already made that breakthrough?"

"Then I would do everything in my power to join their team, because my biggest dream in life is to participate in creating a technology that can change the industry."

Snapping her fingers crisply, Jiang Yuan smiled:

"Then congratulations, today you will witness this breakthrough with your own eyes!"

Xie Yunfan's eyes widened instantly upon hearing this, a jolt running through his body as an unbelievable thought surfaced in his mind... Could it be?

She didn't give him any more time to think.

Jiang Yuan had already opened the laptop beside her, pulled up the global illumination demo for the Aurora Engine, and turned the screen toward him.

"This is our company's self-developed engine, internally codenamed Aurora."

"The scene you're looking at has over ten thousand dynamic light sources and unlimited light bounces, yet it's running on a standard RTX 4070 with a stable frame rate of over 120 FPS."

Xie Yunfan had unconsciously opened his mouth so wide he could practically swallow an egg.

He stared blankly at the computer screen, and then, after receiving Jiang Yuan's permission, he repeatedly dragged the camera view and changed material parameters, as if trying to confirm over and over again whether he was experiencing a dream.

Finally, Xie Yunfan looked at Jiang Yuan with a serious gaze, his expression exceptionally sincere and almost holy as he pleaded:

"President Jiang, I want to join your team! Please, let me meet the genius who developed this engine. I'm willing to work for free! No! I'm even willing to invest in the company myself!"

"Working that hard? Do you have a mine at home?"

He smiled somewhat sheepishly at the question and said awkwardly:

"My family does... indeed have a little bit of money..."

Jiang Yuan: "..."

Jiang Yuan's smile faded, and she said somewhat speechlessly:

"I still have to pay you a salary; I won't shortchange you."

"But let me give you fair warning: Spark's confidentiality policy is very strict, especially in the engine department. Everything you see here cannot be disclosed to the outside world. Your Bilibili account seems to have a decent following, but you might not be able to update it for a long time."

Xie Yunfan nodded repeatedly without the slightest hesitation.

Looking at his fanatical expression, forget about abandoning his fans—even if he were asked to steal money from home to subsidize the company, he would probably act without a second thought.