Interactive Data Visualization says its foliage middleware solution SpeedTreeRT, will appear in Sega's upcoming real-time strategy title Empire: Total War. SpeedTreeRT enables developers to render trees and plants with adjustable wind effects, and user-configurable LOD transitions. In addition to providing SpeedTreeCAD, an application for creating and editing animated trees in real-time, SpeedTreeRT includes a library of hundreds of tree, plant, and marine models representing over 200 core species. Empire: Total War is developed by Sega Europe studio The Creative Assembly, and lets players control the economic, political and military forces of the 18th century. The first installment of the series to include real-time naval combat, it releases on March 4. "SpeedTree was licensed to bring visual richness to the title, as well as to provide convincing visual barriers, natural obstacles and strategic hiding places," explains Gary Dunn, Sega Europe's managing director of European development.