Torc Partners With AMD To Demo Instinct Engine

Irish-based game engine firm Torc Interactive has announced the release of Dreadnought, a 64-bit technology demo made in conjunction with AMD, utilizing the Torc's Instinct Engine to showcase the power of AMD64 technology-based systems. According to the creators, Dreadnought takes advantage of the performance benefits of AMD64 technology in using uncompressed normal maps, allowing for higher texture quality and greater detail, significantly increased number of particle effects, persistent decals, post-processing effects, and more pixel shader instructions. Dermot Gallagher, CTO of Torc Interactive, commented: "At first glance, Dreadnought would appear to be a graphics intensive game and therefore a slave to the video hardware running it. The fact is that Dreadnought demands just as much if not more out of the processor as video hardware. Key performance-heavy components such as physics, animations, light and shadow determination all execute on the processor, and due to the detail of the Dreadnought environment provided by the Instinct Engine, require a powerful processor like the AMD Athlon 64 FX to enable playable frame rates." Torc has also announced that v1.0 of its Instinct Engine is set for market release at Game Developers Conference 2006 in San Jose next March.