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.
Intel®, the leading maker of computer hardware, have featured Simul Weather in their Middleware Gallery. Simul Weather is fully compatible with the latest Intel multi-core processors, featuring optional support for Threading Building Blocks – find out more here.
Simul Weather version 1.4.0 is ready to hit, it’s uploading overnight. There are numerous improvements, but the best new feature is that every page of the help file has a web-form that sends us direct feedback about the documentation.
DarkBASIC is a complete game-development system aimed at the amateur-to-professional developer.
We’ve put together a version of Simul Weather for DarkBASIC – it has a few limitations that aren’t in the main product. It’s called DarkCLOUDS is now available from The Game Creators – find it here.
DX10 (at least the version of August 2007) seems to really dislike rendering to buffers that aren’t powers of two – e.g. rendering to a HDR buffer that’s 1280 by 720!
Here’s a table of roughly corresponding DX9 and DX10 expressions:
D3DFORMAT
->
DXGI_FORMAT
D3DFMT_…
->
DXGI_FORMAT_…
D3DUSAGE_…
->
D3D10_USAGE_…
D3DVERTEXELEMENT9
->
D3D10_INPUT_ELEMENT_DESC
CreateVertexDeclaration
->
CreateInputLayout
OnLostDevice
->
not used?
D3DXCreateTexture
->
ID3D10Device::CreateTexture1D, CreateTexture2D
D3DXCreateVolumeTexture
->
ID3D10Device::CreateTexture3D
LockRect
->
Map
UnlockRect
->
Unmap
D3DLOCKED_RECT
->
D3D10_MAPPED_TEXTURE2D
D3DLOCKED_BOX
->
D3D10_MAPPED_TEXTURE3D
SetVertexDeclaration
->
IASetInputLayout
ID3DXEffect::SetTexture
->
ID3D10EffectShaderResourceVariable::SetResource
ID3DXEffect::SetVector
->
ID3D10EffectVectorVariable::SetFloatVector
ID3DXEffect::SetFloat
->
ID3D10EffectFloatVariable::SetFloat
D3DQUERYTYPE_
->
D3D10_QUERY_DESC
D3DXCreateTextureFromFile
->
D3DX10CreateTextureFromFile
LPDIRECT3DSURFACE9, IDirect3DSurface9 *
->
ID3D10RenderTargetView*, ID3D10DepthStencilView*
LPDIRECT3DTEXTURE9, IDirect3Texture9
->
ID3D10Texture1D, ID3D10Texture2D
D3DXHANDLE (for shader variables)
->
ID3D10EffectScalarVariable*, ID3D10EffectVectorVariable*, etc.
Version 1.2 of our award-winning weather software is now available.
Simul Weather allows developers to generate real-time weather effects, including 3D volumetric clouds that grow and change in real time, with minimal CPU and GPU overhead. Already in-use in several major upcoming titles, Simul Weather saves many man-hours of effort for any developer looking to include live time-of-day effects, as well as generating a sky that just looks right.
Real-time images from Simul Weather 1.2, including sky, clouds, haze and fade tables.
Many companies expend a lot of effort on getting their sky looking right and end up with a compromised solution that uses unnecessary clock cycles. After 3 years’ research, our skies are physically correct, look like the real thing, and use a fraction of the system resources that most home-grown solutions do.
New features in version 1.2 include managed fade tables – for physically correct distance-fades that match seamlessly with the sky. Also included, optional threading support from Intel Threading Building Blocks – to distribute sky calculations over multiple cores.
As ever, the SDK includes clear, simple sample programs using DirectX and OpenGL, and drop-in source code for sky and cloud renderers. Available on PC and major console platforms, Simul Weather can be evaluated for free. Contact enquiries@simul.co.uk, or go to www.simul.co.uk/weather/licensing for details.
