Epic to Unveil New U3 Engine Features at GDC

Epic, makers of the U3 Unreal Engine, have announced that they’ll be releasing new features at GDC this year.  From their release:

Unreal Lightmass, a new global illumination solver, will be shown for the first time at GDC. Unreal Lightmass produces high-quality static lighting with next-generation effects, such as: soft shadows with accurate penumbrae; diffuse and specular interreflection; and color bleeding. Furthermore, Epic’s new Swarm distributed computing framework enables lighting to be generated up to 10 times faster. The new lighting features are bundled with Unreal Engine 3 and benefit all current and future engine licensees. Like all of Epic’s engine features, Unreal Lightmass is available at no additional cost to licensees.

Soft Shadows and color bleeding are impressive enough, but doing it 10x faster is a huge one.  Can’t wait to see this in the next round of games.

via Epic to Unveil New U3 Engine Features at GDC – News and Siteseeing.