New 64-bit game engine is backed by industry veterans

Oxide Games, a recently formed studio built on veteran talent from Microsoft, Firaxis and Stardock, has announced Nitrous, a new native 64-bit game engine intended for next-generation PCs and game consoles. Nitrous's core property is its support for S.W.A.R.M. (Simultaneous Work and Rendering Model), which allows the engine to draw quickly from a multicore CPU, cutting down on the pipeline. "In most modern games, players may see a handful of unique, high-fidelity 3D models on the screen at the same time. That's because current 3D engines are 32-bit and rely on a 'main thread' to talk to the GPU," says Oxide Games co-founder Tim Kipp, a 3D engine architect whose past clients include Microsoft, Northrop Grumman and Firaxis Games. "Nitrous, by contrast, was designed from scratch to be a 64-bit, multicore engine." Kipp is joined by several Firaxis alumni -- Dan Baker, Marc Meyer, and Brian Wade (Civilization V) -- as well as Stardock CEO Brad Wardell (Sins of the Solar Empire), who in addition to spearheading seed capital for Oxide will serve as a business and management logistics lead for the company.