I will update this post, with useful links.
best "state of the art" stuff, mostly by top companies, latest tech (starcraft2, crysis..)
SIGGraph course on real-time rendering
(2006) http://developer.amd.com/media/gpu_assets/Course_26_SIGGRAPH_2006.pdf
(2007) http://ati.amd.com/developer/SIGGRAPH07/Course28-Advanced_Real-Time_Rendering_in_3D_Graphics_and_Games_SIGGRAPH07.pdf
(2008) http://ati.amd.com/developer/SIGGRAPH08/Siggraph2008-Advances_in_Real-Time_Rendering_Course.pdf
http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/papers-please (overview on classic graphics papers)
(2009) more to come: http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=Siggraph_09
Siggraph 2008 GI course: http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~jaroslav/papers/2008-irradiance_caching_class/index.htm
and because I mostly just grab links from these:
company publication sites
(pixar) http://graphics.pixar.com/research/ (the mecca)
(guerilla) http://www.guerrilla-games.com/publications/dr_kz2_rsx_dev07.pdf (killzone 2 tech overview)
(valve) http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications.html (valve has lots of papers on their tech, really good stuff)
(bungie) http://www.bungie.net/Inside/publications.aspx (also spilled the important beans similar to valve)
(insomniac) http://www.insomniacgames.com/tech/techpage.php (more ps3/code oriented)
(epic) http://unrealtechnology.com/whats-new.php?ref=downloads
(nvidia) http://developer.nvidia.com/page/documentation.html
(ati) http://ati.amd.com/developer/techreports.html
(crytek) http://www.crytek.com/technology/presentations/
hair
http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/hair/hair-sg03final.pdf
http://ati.amd.com/developer/gdc/scheuermann_hairrendering.pdf (real-time variant)
shading
http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2006/SIGGRAPH06_Course_ShadingInValvesSourceEngine.pdf
http://www.bungie.net/images/Inside/publications/presentations/lighting_material.zip
http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/t.weyrich/projects/phd/weyrich-2006-phd-lowres.pdf
compression
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/real-time-normal-map-dxt-compression.html
meshing / deformation
http://www2.in.tu-clausthal.de/~hormann/parameterization/index.html
http://graphics.uni-bielefeld.de/publications/papers/
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/~sorkine/
filter/image
http://people.csail.mit.edu/sparis/bf_course/
http://web4.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/t.weyrich/projects/xlrcam/kim09xlrcam-lowres.pdf
architecture
http://beautifulpixels.blogspot.com/2008/08/multi-platform-multi-core-architecture.html
nice post by a gamebryo dev on the different architectures.
http://www.crytek.com/fileadmin/user_upload/inside/presentations/2009/A_bit_more_deferred_-_CryEngine3.ppt
raytracing
http://ompf.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9
mostly code related, sometimes however hints at what tech is to come in future
individuals / blogs
timothy farrar (human head): http://farrarfocus.blogspot.com/ http://www.farrarfocus.com/atom/
ignacio castano (nvidia): http://castano.ludicon.com/blog/
wolfgang engel (former rockstar): http://diaryofagraphicsprogrammer.blogspot.com/
tom forsyth (former radgametools, now intel): http://home.comcast.net/~tom_forsyth/blog.wiki.html
Iñigo Quílez (demoscene): http://iquilezles.org/www/
Kun Zhou (researcher): http://www.kunzhou.net
Rui Wang (researcher): http://www.cs.umass.edu/~ruiwang/#publications
Carsten Dachsbacher (researcher): http://www.vis.uni-stuttgart.de/~dachsbcn/publications.html
Szirmay-Kalos László (researcher): http://www.iit.bme.hu/~szirmay/puba.html
http://erdani.org/publications/
Marc Stamminger (researcher): http://www9.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/people/publishedby/marc/stamminger/
computer graphics at williams college: http://graphics.cs.williams.edu/papers/
Jiaping Wang(researcher) http://www.lightthoughts.com/jpwang/
icare3d (researcher): http://www.icare3d.org/blog_techno/
Jaroslav Krivanek (researcher) http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~jaroslav/
