Pre-GDC: Illuminate Labs Debuting New Beast Lighting Tech At GDC

Swedish software company Illuminate Labs said Wednesday that it will introduce the latest version of its Beast lighting middleware at next week's Game Developers Conference, with two new modules. Those two modules are DistriBeast -- a distribution engine for managing render farms -- and eRnsT -- a real-time visualizer that lets developers experiment with a game's lighting without having to run a complete bake. "A pre-computed lighting solution is the only way to achieve high quality global illumination in a game at a reasonable cost," stated Magnus Wennerholm, CEO of Illuminate Labs. "A pre-computed solution gives you predictable performance, requires less hardware resources, and works on both high- and low-end platforms." The unveiling of a new Beast version comes after the company announced in October last year that it was opening a new San Francisco office, focused on technical sales and on-site consulting. Illuminate Labs' lighting technology can be found in games including God of War III, Killzone 2, and Mirror's Edge. GDC, run by Gamasutra's parent company UBM TechWeb, takes place March 9-13 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Illuminate Labs will be in the Nordic Games booth #1802 in the South Hall, and will be holding the sponsored session, Lighting Your Game the Beast Way, daily at 3:00-4:00pm in room 302 in the South Hall.