News & Events
CISE STUDENT DEVELOPS REAL-TIME GRAPHICS ENGINE FOR NEXT-GENERATION GAMES AND SIMULATIONS
February 14, 2005
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Since the introduction of Pong several decades ago, the history of video game development has been defined by progress. University of Florida students Jeremy Stieglitz and Dave Sleeper of Artificial Studios are continuing this tradition by ushering in a new age of player immersion with their Reality Engine. Artificial Studios' Reality Engine is a real-time graphics engine for next-generation games and simulations. It is a middleware application that enables video game developers to create video games just as a Web design program allows web developers to create Web sites. Video games built using the Reality Engine will be playable on Microsoft's Xbox 2 and PCs running Microsoft Windows.
"We want to get the Reality Engine positioned as one of the premier engines to derive the maximum level of performance out of the Xbox 2 and PCs as well," said Jeremy Stieglitz, founder of Artificial Studios. "Hopefully better games will be developed as a result."
Artificial Studios' Reality Engine is already gaining notice in the marketplace. The video game development company U-235 Studios has licensed the middleware and is using it to create a game called Retribution (screen shots viewable at www.deadlyretribution.com). Devmaster.net, a video game development Web site (http://www.devmaster.net/engines/engine_details.php?id=26#reviews), features six reviews of the Reality Engine; half of the reviewers gave the product a five-star rating (out of five possible), the other three rated the product at four-and-one-half stars. Because of the Reality Engine's physics capabilities and high-end graphic quality, military contractors and architecture firms have expressed interest in the engine's simulation potential.
The unique aspect of the engine is its ability to render all graphics in
real-time thus creating graphically engaging and interactive playing environments.
Because the Reality Engine handles the technical aspects of video game development,
developers are free to concentrate on artistic considerations. 
As Stieglitz explains, "Reality Engine is a one-stop solution on the technical side.it lets developers focus all of their energies on the fun stuff, the creative stuff, the aspects that gamers actually see and that makes the game fun to them."
Stieglitz, a UF computer science student, began developing the Reality Engine in 2001 with Tim Johnson. Tim Johnson is a programmer living in the United Kingdom. To meet their objective of building an engine that would enable developers to create truly amazing games, they enlisted the help of two additional programmers, Mostafa Mohamed of Egypt and UF student Dave Sleeper, and art director Jesse Rapzcak. Rapzcak handled the production of art content for the Reality Engine demos.
Sleeper's contribution has been to integrate the physics engine into the Reality Engine that makes the real-time motion and object interaction possible. Objects are given a rigid-body representation and the physics engine is given the relevant information which determines how the objects will move and interact.
The integration of a physics engine into Reality was no minor task. The team attempted to integrate several physics engines before Sleeper found one that had the capabilities Artificial Studios needed. "There's a lot to the physics side," explained Sleeper.
The Artificial Studios team invests most of their free time and resources in the Reality Engine project in the hope of making video games more fun for the end user. To that end team member Mohamed's contribution has been to write a scripting engine which enables players to modify games developed with the Reality Engine using a simple text editor like Microsoft Notepad.
"Successful games have proven that if you give people tools and the ability to make their own customizations to your game, it sells more copies," said Stieglitz.
Though the Reality Engine's technical capabilities place it in close competition with high-end development engines, Artificial Studios licenses its product for much less than its competition. The Reality Engine's closest competitor UnrealEngine3 is an industry leader which licenses for approximately $750,000. The licensing fees for Reality Engine are less than one-tenth of that for UnrealEngine 3.
Even though his team's product is priced lower, Stieglitz is confident the Reality Engine has technical capabilities equal to and possibly surpassing that of its competitors. The reviews on Devmaster.net support these contentions.
Stieglitz and crew plan to continue to develop and improve their product after its release. Online reviews have expressed satisfaction with the development team's efforts to constantly release updates and provide support for their product.
Chances are if you play video games you will see major improvements in graphic presentation and interaction with the release of the next-generation game consoles. Artificial Studios plans to be a driving force as games evolve through the next-generation systems and beyond.
For more information about Artificial Studios and the Reality Engine visit
www.artificialstudios.com.
Source: Artificial Studios, www.artificialstudios.com
Writer: Danny Rigby, drigby@ufl.edu
