Features Seven Incredibly Realistic Worlds Built with SpeedTreeRT™
September 13, 2004
[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Game Developer and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press]
IDV |
EMBARGOED UNTIL: September 13, 2004
COLUMBIA, SC - Trees of PangaeaTM, a collection of seven new real-time worlds of breathtaking beauty and unprecedented efficiency, has been released by IDV to showcase the power, efficiency and sheer beauty of SpeedTreeRTTM, real-time's leading foliage solution. The demo is available for free download at www.idvinc.com.
"We wanted to create a system driven by SpeedTreeRT that provides a jaw-dropping outdoor experience, one that measures visibility in miles and navigable area in hundreds of square miles," says Chris King, president of SpeedTree developer Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. "The people who access this demo will witness a virtual outdoors at a quality that has never been seen in a game before, and likely won't be available in games for at least another year," Mr. King says.
Trees of Pangaea's seven worlds will each feature hundreds of thousands of trees and plants on vast terrains, and will include a haunted forest, a desert, a New England woods, an Australian outback and an Asian jungle.
The demo delivers extremely realistic lighting, including shadow algorithms newly-developed by IDV that enable each tree to uniquely cast a shadow on the uneven terrain, the grass around it and even other trees.
Each of Trees of Pangaea's worlds feature a flying "guide" appropriate to the forest. Helicopters swoop and hover in some forests, while an eerie eye presides over another level. The helicopters are used to show off SpeedTreeRT's powerful wind effects, which include global and local wind.
The demo does not tile the terrain geometry or tree placement patterns, meaning that no two views are the same anywhere in the demo worlds. Terrains are governed by height maps read at run-time, with steep slopes faced with rock, and other areas featuring IDV's wind-blown grass technology, a separate system not sold commercially but available to SpeedTreeRT customers.
SpeedTreeRT, delivers low-polygon, highly realistic trees and plants, with adjustable wind effects, seamless LOD transitions, and an included library of hundreds of tree models from more than 100 core species. SpeedTreeRT includes SpeedTreeCAD, a Windows application used to create and edit animated trees in real-time.
Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. (IDV), develops software products with a focus on realtime three dimensional applications for the game development, visual simulation, engineering visualization, and animation industries. IDV, a privately held corporation, was founded in 1999 in Columbia, South Carolina.
For more information about IDV, visit www.idvinc.com.
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CONTACT
Kevin Meredith
September 13, 2004
(803) 233-0073
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