Emergent Game Technologies has announced the release of the latest version of its Gamebryo engine, boasting several enhancements designed to “dramatically decrease the time and cost required to build stellar cross-platform games” including DirectX 10 and PhysX support. Part of the larger Emergent Elements family of game development software, Gamebryo 2.3 is optimized for development on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. According to Emergent, Gamebryo is already used by more than 200 video game titles, including Bethesda Softworks' multiplatform RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Among the additions made to version 2.3 include added support for DirectX 10 and Ageia's PhysX processor, as well as a new object-based rendering framework that allows for easy programmatic construction of complex rendering effects. In addition, Floodgate optimized task scheduling and execution, and automatic tool chain support for variance shadow mapping, edge tap smoothed PCF shadow mapping, and general shadow mapping are also part of Gamebryo's most recent upgrade. “Whether you have a three person or three hundred person development house, one of your biggest ongoing concerns is managing exploding development budgets for next-generation platforms,” explained Selzer. “While decreasing the cost of production and time to market, Gamebryo 2.3’s tool set delivers a significant technological leap forward, which will aid developers in an environment where multi-threaded development means vastly different things on different platforms.”