Introduction
A brief introduction to Pilot Light
Welcome to Pilot Light.
My name is Jonathan. I’m a professional programmer working primarily in the space industry (Pilot Light is not affiliated with my employer).
Throughout recent years, I’ve been heavily influenced/inspired by a handful of individuals who have gone above and beyond in sharing their invaluable experience in the game industry. Specifically, I’m referring to individuals like Casey Muratori, Jonathan Blow, Mike Acton, Sean Barrett, and more recently Ryan Fleury. The latter’s Digital Grove project in particular inspired me to create this project.
Pilot Light refers to two separate entities: this website and the codebase I’ve been working on for a few years.
In a similar spirit to Digital Grove and the abandoned Our Machinery blog, the Pilot Light website will be a place where I collect my thoughts, notes, dev logs, etc. in the form of blogs, videos, and tutorials. Some of the topics will include:
General programming
Graphics programming
Graphics APIs (i.e. Vulkan, Metal, DirectX)
Custom UI programming
Miscellaneous opinions & thoughts
Dev logs from working on the code base
A later post will go into detail on the Pilot Light codebase.
Planned Tutorial Series
In addition to standalone posts, the following tutorial series are planned:
Practical C Programming
3D Graphics Fundamentals
Vulkan Programming
DirectX 12 Programming
Metal Programming
The above series are just what is currently planned. Additional series will be added later. Most of these will be going on in parallel. Basically, I’ll be working on whatever one I feel like at the moment.
Paid Subscriber Benefits
As much as I’d love to provide everything free of charge, I’ve come to realize that my time is limited and valuable. Time spent working on this project (website & codebase) is time spent away from my family. A small fee not only shows my work is appreciated but also helps justify the effort expended on the project.
As a paid subscriber you will have access to all the paywalled content here on Substack and the entire codebase.
Note: The current codebase is entirely open source at the moment. I haven’t decided yet how to best split the project up. I will address this in a later post.