Guild Wars 2 to Take Advantage of Umbra 3

ArenaNet had another stress-test for Guild Wars 2 last weekend. To ensure smooth gameplay for the fans of the game, the developer has been tuning the game engine and its servers. Today, they announced a new partnership with Umbra Software, the firm behind Umbra 3 rendering optimization technology. Read on for details on Umbra 3 and how it will affect Guild Wars 2 gameplay.

Guild Wars 2 to be powered by Umbra 3

ArenaNet's Guild Wars 2 features one of the most impressive virtual worlds; the beautiful world of Tyria. As the developer is working on every single detail, it's expected for the game's engine to be hard on low-end PC hardware. Thanks to the partnership with Umbra Software, it may not be the case.

“Umbra 3 provides an excellent solution for our expansive, open world environments. We are very happy with the choice we made with Umbra and the support we’ve been given by the Umbra team” said Patrick Laukaitis; the Senior Software Engineer at ArenaNet who has worked closely with Umbra’s engineering team throughout the production of Guild Wars 2.

Guild Wars 2 will be released in about two weeks and ArenaNet had another stress-test over last weekend. Today we found out they have done more to ensure the maximum optimization of the game and its rendering pipeline.

Umbra 3 rendering technology used in Guild Wars 2

Anyone that plays MMO games know how annoying it is to see FPS drop when you are in the middle of a massive PvP battle. Going under 30 fps, it just ruing the whole gaming experience. This is mostly because of badly optimized game engines. 

If this Umbra 3 technology which is quite new and we have not seen it in action in any other games. (Guild Wars 2 and ArenaNet is one of their early clients.) 

In the video above, developers of Umbra 3 try to explain how Umbra 3 and Occlusion Culling works. 

What is Umbra 3

On Umbra 3 website, the technology is defined as a rendering optimization middleware. This means, Umbra 3 cuts down CPU and GPU processing time as it helps optimize the game's rendering and content streaming, AI and game logic. The idea behind the technology is that it calculates what's visible and what is not. According to this calculation, it helps CPU and GPU process what's actually needed to be processed. It sounds very clever, doesn't it? According to the website, it does support multiple platforms and not only PC. Another detail is that Umbra 3 is also used in Perfect World Entertainment's upcoming MMORPG "RaiderZ".

Use the Subscribe button and we will send you updates on this game. (You need to be logged in)