Simul announces the Sky Sequencer – a new tool for technical artists, animators and programmers. The Sky Sequencer edits a track of cloud and sky keyframes, so artists can plan out a series of weather and time-of-day events. The sequence can be played back in real- or accelerated time, to show the interplay of sky, clouds, atmospherics and weather effects.
A complete sequence, either one-shot or as a loop, can be saved and imported into any program that incorporates Simul Weather. To try out this powerful new tool, contact Simul on enquiries@simul.co.uk.
Top commercial simulation site, MODSIM.ORG has a review / product description up of Simul Weather (direct link). There’s some new video and screenshots, as well as some comparison shots of Simul’s time-of-day lighting with real photos.
If you are in business, you probably have a business card. If you have a business card, you should have a QR-code on it, so people can easily scan your details. The open-source ZXing project has a neat code generator, it can be found here. Use an app like Barcode Scanner on Android or iPhone to scan the data.
It’s not entirely clear what the name is for Windows’ batch file language – it might be called “Command Line”, or “MS-DOS”, or Batch. But this language is one of a class called “shells”. What distinguishes a shell language from a regular scripting language is that it is considered to be a “shell” around the OS kernel, with direct access to OS services like file and directory services.
Most shells operate with a current directory context. So the Windows shell input line tells you what directory you are in. It also has an environment variable context – it inherits whatever environment variables are permanently set in Windows, then others can be added. But when you exit from the shell, environment variables usually revert to the default setting.
Any program called from the shell or from a batch file will inherit its current environment variables. This means that you can set-up multiple environments for working on different projects in (say) Visual Studio. One trick we use is to never start Visual Studio directly, but always launch it from a batch file,
VisualStudio2005.bat:
set VSDIR=%PROGRAM_FILES32%\Microsoft Visual Studio 8
call "%VSDIR%\VC\vcvarsall.bat" x86
SET MASM_32_OR_64=%VSDIR%\VC\Bin\ml.exe
set INCLUDE=%DXSDK_DIR%\include;%INCLUDE%
set LIB=%DXSDK_DIR%\lib\x86;%LIB%
start "Visual Studio 2005" "%VSDIR%\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe" /useenv
This sets up a few env variables – the INCLUDE and LIB variables are particularly useful because this is what Visual Studio uses to determine the default include and library directories for compiling. So with this batch, we make sure that the current DirectX can be found.
Then we launch the Visual Studio IDE, using not the usual “call”, but “start”. If we used call, the batch file window would remain open, waiting for Visual Studio to quit. But “start” means “launch and forget”, so as soon as Visual Studio has been launched, the batch window will end and close – much cleaner.
Head over to the Intel® stand, #1212 at the GDC 2010 Expo, from 2 till 6, to see Simul’s new tools and technology for dynamic skies and volumetric weather effects. Intel have kindly hosted Simul on their stand today, which features a selection of the best high-performance software for games, running on the latest multi-core Intel processors.
The award-winning Simul Weather SDK allows developers to generate volumetric weather systems with clouds that grow and change in real time. The SDK works within a developer’s chosen rendering framework, offering full control of all aspects of weather rendering.
“Our Artists love the Simul Weather SDK because they have full control about the results while still having unique and non-repetitive clouds. Our programmers appreciate the low memory consumption as well as the performance.” said Andreas Speer, Studio Manager of  Spellbound, “All that made the Simul Weather SDK the tool of our choice.”
“We are delighted to be working with Spellbound,” said Dr Roderick Kennedy, Chief Executive of Simul, “and have been very impressed with the results they’ve achieved with the SDK. Simul’s aim is for middleware that’s completely painless to add to a new or existing project, and Spellbound have been instrumental in helping us achieve this.”
“ArcaniA –A Gothic Tale will be a new milestone in the history of interactive role playing games. For this reason, we dedicated ourselves to only use high-quality middleware and cutting edge techniques for ArcaniA. Our commitment to make ArcaniA an AAA game is still upright and is reflected in choosing only state-of-the-art technologies. “, says Clemens Schneidhofer, PR Coordinator at JoWooD.
About Simul
Simul Software Ltd was founded in Manchester in 2007 by games industry veterans. The Chief Executive and Technical Lead of Simul is Dr Roderick Kennedy, whose previous work includes the DID classics TFX and EF2000; and Evolution Studios’ WRC4 and WRC: Rally Evolved.
The Simul Weather SDK won the Research and Development Project Excellence Award in the British Computer Society’s IT Industry Awards 2008.
About Spellbound
Spellbound Entertainment AG is one of the leading German game developers. The company is based in Kehl and has created more than 20 games within the last 15 years. Spellbound obtained international attention with its Desperados and Airline Tycoon series that sold worldwide with great success. Spellbound is a registered developer on all established console platforms. In April they released their latest title Giana Sisters DS for Nintendo DS.
JoWooD publishes internationally competitive, high-quality entertainment software for all existing and future gaming systems. The attention is focused on the extension and the advancement of throughout the world known JoWooD game brands. JoWooD games are being distributed over a worldwide network of distribution partners.
