Epic Games recently unveiled a number of new tools and systems for Unreal Engine 3 at the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Calif. Unreal Lightmass, a new global illumination solver, produces high-quality static lighting with next-generation effects. Lightmass leverages Epic’s new Unreal Swarm distributed computing framework, which enables lighting to be generated up to 10 times faster than before. The new Unreal Content Browser enables designers to quickly locate game assets with thumbnail previews, tag content with metadata, and easily manage asset collections. In addition, the Unreal Master Control Program (MCP) is a scalable statistics and data management back end that supports announcements, settings management, online population tracking, and data collection for hardware, profile, and game stats. Unreal MCP includes a set of tools for visualizing gameplay, and can be used for online and offline game components during development and after shipping a game. All of the new engine features are bundled with Unreal Engine 3 at no additional cost to licensees.

Hours for Epic’s booth are the same as expo hours: Tuesday, June 2, 12:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Wednesday, June 3, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m., and Thursday, June 4, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Those wishing to individually meet with Epic should email Mark Rein, mark.rein@epicgames.com, and specify three possible meeting times, the number of people planning to attend, and whether those individuals would like to see a technology demonstration, chat with Epic business representatives, speak with Epic technical representatives or see to other matters. Availability may be limited, so please respond early. Those unable to confirm an appointment in advance are invited to drop by, and Epic will do its best to accommodate visitors.

About Unreal Engine 3
The award-winning Unreal Engine is known for cutting-edge graphics and its best-of-breed toolset. Unreal Engine 3 maintains those features while adding massive world support, multi-processor support, next-generation console optimizations, and one of the most mature tool pipelines in the industry. Unreal Engine 3’s new toolset is designed specifically to accelerate developers’ productivity for ultra-complex, next-generation content. Additional information on Unreal Engine can be obtained through the Unreal Technology Web site at www.unrealtechnology.com.