SpeedTreeRT Announces Three New Licensees

Interactive Data Visualization, the developer behind foliage middleware solution SpeedTreeRT, announced seven new licensees for its software, including THQ for 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand and Ubisoft's recently acquired Southlogic Studios for Deer Hunter Tournament. Due February 24th for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand follows rapper 50 Cent as he deals with violent criminals while trying to recover stolen goods in the Middle East. THQ's Saints Row 2, released in October 2008, also featured SpeedTreeRT as part of the publisher's agreement with IDV. Several of the company's other upcoming titles using the middleware, which include role-playing and action projects, have yet to be announced. Slovakian technology firm DATAcrea also licensed SpeedTreeRT for its GolfBlaster 3D indoor golf simulator created in partnership with Datalink SW. In addition to providing several built-in courses for players to enjoy, GoldBLaster 3D offers a course creation tool so customers can build and play on unique courses. In Southlogic's Deer Hunter Tournament, players hunt a wide selection of animals, including various deer varieties, elk, moose, cougars, and grizzlies. They can find cover behind trees and plants created by SpeedTreeRT while stalking their prey. This latest entry to the Deer Hunter series adds an online hunting feature to the franchise. The game was released for PC last October and is scheduled so ship for Xbox 360 sometime in 2009. SpeedTreeRT enables developers to render trees and plants with adjustable wind effects, and user-configurable LOD transitions In addition to providing SpeedTreeCAD, an application for creating and editing animated trees in real-time, SpeedTreeRT includes a library of hundreds of tree, plant, and marine models representing over 200 core species. "In the past, we dedicated entire teams to creating vegetation," says Southlogic's commercial director Chris Kastensmidt. "Now we can use those same people to improve our overall level design. SpeedTree has cut our costs, decreased development time, and increased quality."