Battlefield 4 lighting tech firm wins £1 million to help make movies

The Technology Strategy Board -- a public body tasked with stimulating the UK's economic growth by supporting "innovative" businesses -- has awarded lighting middleware company Geomerics a £1 million grant to help it adapt its Enlighten real-time graphics rendering technology for use in the film industry. “Real-time computer graphics technology can now meet the quality demands of both film and television,” stated Geomerics director Dr. Chris Doran in a press release announcing the award. “Providing our lighting technology to big screen filmmakers enables them to deliver movies with compelling visual experiences faster and for less money with the quality that moviegoers expect. This will be a dramatic shift in the industry’s production practices.” The money is expected to fund Geomerics' efforts to develop new ways of efficiently rendering real-time graphics, animation and lighting for producing movies and other media. The company has seen notable success licensing out its Enlighten global illumination technology, which is supported by contemporary hardware like Sony's PlayStation 4 and licensed for use in software like Unity, Battlefield 4 and EVE Online. Geomerics pitched the project last year, as part of a competition held by the TSB to dole out up to £14 million in grants to projects that "stimulate innovation" in the UK's digital media market. The middleware company was later acquired by ARM, but still qualified to receive the TSB grant.