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Geomerics

Geomerics Ltd.
Company typeLimited partnership
IndustryVideo games
Founded2005
FounderChris J. L. Doran
HeadquartersCambridge, Cambridgeshire, England
Key people
Chris J. L. Doran (COO)
Gary Lewis (CEO)
ProductsEnlighten
Number of employees
25 (2010)[1]
WebsiteGeomerics.com

Geomerics was a software company based in Cambridge, UK, that specialised in creating lighting technology for the video game industry.

The company's main product was Enlighten, software code that calculates indirect lighting ("radiosity") in real-time for live action games running on systems such as the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and personal computers. The company licensed this code to game companies for incorporation into their proprietary rendering engines.[2][3][4][5] The software was ported to Nvidia's CUDA platform in 2011.[6]

The first system to incorporate the middleware was the Frostbite 2 engine,[7] created by the EA DICE studio, used in Battlefield 3 (2011)[8] and Need for Speed: The Run (2011).[9] Enlighten has also been licensed for a variety of other titles,[10] including Eve Online,[11] has an integration for Unreal Engine 3 & 4,[12][13] and was built into Unity from version 5 to 2020 LTS.[14][15]

Advanced real-time global illumination system Enlighten has since become property of and is further developed by Silicon Studio.[16][17][18]

History

The company was formed by Angle PLC[19] an LSE listed company (LSE:AGL) in 2005. The project was led by Chris J. L. Doran as a spin out from Cambridge University.[20] Its chief executive included Gary Lewis,[21] who prior to joining the company was the Global Chief Operating Officer at Take 2 Interactive in New York.[22]

The development of Enlighten started in 2006 and saw major distribution with the release of Battlefield 3 in 2011 and updates to ongoing massively multiplayer online game Eve Online.[23] According to the company, "Enlighten's revolutionary technology ensures that, for the first time, lighting can be updated in real time, in game, on today's consoles."[9]

In December 2013 ARM, a Cambridge-based mobile CPU and GPU designer, acquired Geomerics, "for a number of reasons but foremost was Enlighten, Geomerics' award-winning technology for real-time lighting" said Dennis Laudick, ARM's vice president of partner marketing.[24] The terms of the deal were not made public.[25]

In July 2014, Geomerics was awarded £1 million from the United Kingdom's Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to take the company's real-time graphics capabilities from computer gaming to film-making.[26]

See also

References

  1. ^ Bio for Jules Davis Archived 4 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine (previously CTO), Tenshi Ventures. (Retrieved 7 July 2011).
  2. ^ Codeshop: Step Into The Light, EDGE, 18 February 2008
  3. ^ Game Developer, 16 (11), December 2009, Page 35
  4. ^ Keith Stuart, Becoming Enlightened, Guardian Online, 5 February 2008.
  5. ^ Sam Martin (Geomerics), Per Einarsson (DICE) "A real-time radiosity architecture for video games 2", in Advances in Real-Time Rendering, SIGGRAPH 2010
  6. ^ Real-Time Live!, SIGGRAPH 2011
  7. ^ Kenny Magnusson (DICE),"Lighting you up in Battlefield 3", GDC 2011
  8. ^ EDGE, May 2011, p. 28-29
  9. ^ a b "Enlighten: Case Studies". Geomerics. Archived from the original on 2 December 2013. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  10. ^ Press release: Geomerics Sales Progress, Angle PLC, 14 April 2011. "Geomerics [has secured]... sales for seven new titles with three major publishers in the first quarter. All the new titles are with large publishers and include some of the industry’s most iconic and best selling computer games. In keeping with the games industry’s standard working practices, details of the individual titles and publishers will not be made public until those titles are released. At this time, the only information Geomerics is able to disclose is that three of these titles are scheduled to be released in calendar 2011, all of them well-known and highly regarded game franchises."
  11. ^ "Eve online and world of darkness to use Enlighten". Geomerics. Archived from the original on 26 March 2012. Retrieved 6 September 2019.
  12. ^ "Geomerics Announces New Enlighten Integration with Unreal Engine 3". Unreal Engine. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  13. ^ "Enlighten: Real-Time Global Illumination in Unreal Engine 4". Unreal Engine. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  14. ^ "Unity Technologies Debuts Unity 5 at GDC". Animation World Network.
  15. ^ "Enlighten will be replaced with a robust solution for Baked and Real-time GIobal Illumination". Unity Blog. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  16. ^ "RiME from Grey Box, Six Foot and Tequila Works first game on Nintendo Switch™ to feature "Enlighten" Global Illumination". www.siliconstudio.co.jp. Retrieved 21 October 2021.
  17. ^ "Silicon Studio's post-effect middleware "YEBIS" and global illumination system "Enlighten" adopted by "GOD EATER 3" from BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment". www.siliconstudio.co.jp. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
  18. ^ "Enlighten global illumination releases version 3.10". www.siliconstudio.co.jp. Retrieved 18 November 2019.
  19. ^ Angle PLC
  20. ^ Game Changers, Develop, 5 February 2008
  21. ^ Financial Times, 2 February 2007, Page 4.
  22. ^ Patrick Garratt, Gary Lewis joins Geomerics as CEO, gamesindustry.biz, 31 January 2007. Retrieved (via Google cache) 5 July 2011
  23. ^ "Enlighten research" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 September 2011.
  24. ^ Chapple, Craig (8 April 2014). "Chris Doran and Dennis Laudick discuss what developers can expect now that Geomerics is part of ARM". Develop News in Depth. Archived from the original on 11 April 2014. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
  25. ^ Myslewski, Rik (13 December 2013). "ARM swallows graphics software biz Geomerics to tart-up mobile games". The Register:Biting the Hand that Feeds IT. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
  26. ^ "UK Govt Backs Geomerics to Revolutionize the Movie Industry". Business Wire. 10 July 2014. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
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