ArenaNet Licenses Umbra for Guild Wars

http://www.umbrasoftware.com/index.php?company&news=29
found @wartower.de

ArenaNet just killed Guild Wars 2.

New GPU technology = unplayable on low end systems = DEATH.

No.

Just...no.

Completely wrong.

It's a technology that reduces the number of rendered polygons.
How is such a thing making a game worse for lower end machines?

Because lower-end GPUs will never get the drivers to support the Umbra technology. There's a reason developers haven't embraced DirectX v10.

Also, I checked out the website for this Unbra thingy, and it has zero information whatsoever.

Hmm... I don't know what to say on this. Looks like I might reconsider getting Guild Wars 2 as early (a month after release) as I originally wanted to...

Because Zinger's talking out his ass (no offense <3) and has no clue about what Umbra is. Umbra isn't even new technology, it's been around since September of 2007. What it does is occlusion culling - it removes hidden surfaces and such, if something is behind other opague objects, it is culled and not drawn, the result is that only things that can be seen are drawn which reduces the load and increases FPS on lower end (and higher end) machines by a shit ton (depending on various factors, you can get well over a 600% FPS increase.).

Basically it does the exact opposite of what he just said.

Like this. You don't need drivers to support Umbra at all. It's a middleware function for game engines, not an entire API for multimedia.

sooo basically really really shiny bling and better particle spell effects, etc..

ok, as long as the graphics engine is near completion as well as the combat's is on the same phase of completion so it means
potentially beta is out by end of next year?

So basically....it still works even if you don't have GPU acceleration. Probably not as nice as the GPU based stuff, but CUDA, OPENCL, etc have only really caught on recently. This probably amounts to a new implementation of something that's been used before, like Physx being ran on nvidia cards instead of on it's own board.

Considering how GW operates already to reduce bandwidth, server costs, etc. Seems like a good program to pick up.

Yep although by the time GW2 comes out you'd be hard pressed to find a GPU without that feature, even on lower end machines.

EDIT:
srsly Zinger all this does is improve performance for the lower end by a ton, not everything Anet does is gonna kill Guild Wars even if it seems that way. (even tho I think that too, this only has good things attached to it.)

So I guess this means GW2 is alive.

Ok, I may or may not be talking out of my ass, but seriously, I can't find anything on Umbra.

That was the more notable thing I gathered.

As long as Guild Wars 2 doesn't require Vista or DX10 or extremely high requirements it should do ok.

People need to remember that a big part of GW1's success is that its requirements are rather low compared to most other games of its day.

I have no clue what you're looking for, there's not much you can say beyond a really good middleware program that does occlusion culling very effectively that wouldn't be redundant with that. (It's like trying to find stuff on SpeedTree. A program that creates trees fast like.)

What are you looking for, in other words?

They won't require either of those, they aren't completely stupid. And you are most right about the last paragraph, that's actually one of the things they try to strive for in their games, like Blizzard they make games very compatible with low end but still look fantastic for good rigs.

If people don't have dx10 cards by 2010 somethings wrong.

by that time DirectX 11 will be on the way, they will be looking that way by then

Their download section has a video and a pdf brochure.

Even a vid-stream:
http://www.umbrasoftware.com/index.php?videoreel

Apparently Umbra branched off from Hybrid Graphics, when those were bought by nVidia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbra_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Graphics

I went to the umbra page and they were gloating about how their software was used in AoC. That isn't exactly the best game to be bragging about. When I played AoC (with a geforce 8600) I was lucky to get 15 FPS in some areas.

Occlusion culling can only do so much, if the graphics and associated systems are poorly optimized it's not going to help you (and AoC was...VERY badly optimized). But while there's a lot you can say bad about ArenaNet, you can't say that their graphics engine etc was poorly optimized. It's one of the best things they've ever designed easily and it runs smooth, so I have high hopes for GW2 especially with this. The middleware is only as good as the engine its put in, and the AoC engine was very bad.

(Although without it you would have had ~7FPS or less.)

Dude... this is obviously great for GW2!

I remember some time ago a post mentioning that NCSoft bought the license for the U3 engine. (found post: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10271531)
If they have both at Gw2, well... its going to be one hell of a piece of art! (for those who do not know the U3 engine gives incredible lighting features and low poligon use) (video about U3 engine http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Xmxd...eature=related)