ArenaNet Licenses New Technology For Guild Wars

Umbra Software sent out a press release late yesterday announcing that ArenaNet has licensed their “visibility optimization technology” for Guild Wars. The details below:

ArenaNet® Licenses Umbra Software´s Visibility Optimization Solutions

Bellevue, Washington. – October 27, 2008 Umbra Software Ltd., developers of highly-acclaimed Umbra occlusion culling technology, announced today that ArenaNet, Inc. licensed Umbra´s visibility optimization technology to be used in ArenaNet’s award winning Guild Wars® franchise.

(Rather than spend resources developing a new occlusion system to meet the demands of our next game we decided to license technology from the experts,) said Jim Scott, ArenaNet’s lead graphics programmer. (This allowed us to get up and running with sophisticated culling quickly.)

Umbra is a highly robust, GPU based, visibility optimization solution that allows game developers to create highly dynamic game worlds without preprocessing. With Umbra game developers can increase their polygon budgets significantly and create highly complex game worlds which were previously impossible.

(ArenaNet has proven their talent and leadership in building a lasting franchise with over 5 million copies of Guild Wars sold around the globe,) said Farhad Taherazer, VP of marketing for Umbra Software. (With Umbra’s occlusion culling technology, we will give ArenaNet’s talented developers and designers the toolset they will need to create more innovative and large complex 3D worlds with less development time and effort.)

About Umbra Software Ltd.
Umbra Software Ltd. is the expert in 3D visibility optimization solution for PC and game consoles. Umbra Software’s Umbra uses instantaneous occlusion computations to speed up the development cycle; it allows for truly alive, interactive worlds with more objects and characters with new levels of realism; it increases freedom in MMO game worlds, enabling modification of worlds by players on the fly. Umbra Software solutions are currently used by several high-profile games and 3D game engines. For more information see www.umbrasoftware.com.