Duke Nukem Forever & MRG Technology

Adrenaline Vault has a news story entitled "Duke Nukem Forever Proves Size Counts". What's this? It's an article that talks about some technology we licensed from Sven Technologies and have put into Duke Nukem Forever. Here's a bit from the Avault article..

However, a company called Sven Technologies has spent the last 18 months coming up with a code-based solution that should put some of the meat into 3D games again. It is called Multi-Resolution Geometry and it offers something called continuous level of detail. What this does, in layman�s terms, is increase framerates and enhance the visual quality of real-time 3D scenes by drawing polygons only where needed and smoothly increasing and decreasing the resolution of polygonal objects one vertex at a time. How impressive is the technology? Enough for 3D Realms to license and integrate the technology into its upcoming 3D action title Duke Nukem Forever.

The current industry standard is something called discreet level of detail, which requires 3D game designers to create several versions of each model with varying levels of detail; the engine then selects one according to the distance of the object relative to the camera. When a model is close to the player, the higher resolution model is used; when it retreats into the distance, the lower resolution model is used to salvage processing resources. When a model crosses the boundary from one level of detail to the next, the change is often glaring and results in something called "object popping." MRG eliminates object popping by smoothly adding and removing polygons.

George Broussard adds... "MRG easily met and exceeded our expectations. We were able to integrate Sven's technology into Duke Nukem Forever in a matter of days, saving us tremendous development time, hassle and cost. More importantly, though, it is one of the factors that has helped contribute to what will be [our] most visually stunning and playable game yet."

There's a lot more over at the Avault article about this, so make sure to check it out! You can also read the full press release by Sven Technologies on this licensing agreement here.

Posted by Joe Siegler on April 7, 1999 at 1:00 PM | Permalink
News Categories: Duke Nukem Forever