Umbra software
Encyclopedia
Umbra Software Ltd. is a graphics software technology company founded 2007 in Helsinki
, Finland
. Umbra Software specializes in occlusion culling, visibility and rendering optimization technology and provides middleware for videogames running on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PC, iOS and other platforms.
Umbra’s technology is being used in many of today’s biggest videogames such as Mass Effect 2, Lords of the Rings Online, Alan Wake, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Grandia Online, EVE Online, Free Realms and Dragon Age II & Dragon Age Origins.
in 2005. Umbra Software acquired Hybrid Graphics' dPVS
and continued its development. The next generation of this technology, named Umbra, was a hardware accelerated occlusion culling middleware
. Umbra was released in September 2007. In 2009, Umbra Occlusion Booster was released and it was optimized for multi-core systems such as Xbox 360
, PlayStation 3
and PCs
.
In 2011 Umbra is working on Umbra3. Besides visibility optimization, the purpose of Umbra 3 is to increase frame rate and ease game development. Umbra 3 does this by optimizing critical parts of a game such as rendering and by providing tools to help with content streaming and game logic.
Umbra 3 builds an internal representation of a game scene and uses this data at runtime to perform efficient queries that can be used to e.g. determine the set of visible objects for the player or determine the set of objects that are within a given distance from a point.
In March 2010, Unity Technologies announced that the next release of Unity
would feature built-in occlusion culling preprocessing powered by Umbra. Unity Pro ships with Umbra's occlusion culling solution.
Umbra Occlusion Booster is GPU
accelerated occlusion culling middleware for PC, Xbox 360
and PlayStation 3
. This product was released in 2009.
Umbra3 is available for evaluation since spring 2011 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PC, iOS and other platforms on request. Umbra3 integrates easily with Unreal Engine 3, Unity and Gamebryo as well as custom developed game engines. Umbra3 includes an improved version of Umbra Occlusion Booster now known simply as Umbra OB.
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
. Umbra Software specializes in occlusion culling, visibility and rendering optimization technology and provides middleware for videogames running on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PC, iOS and other platforms.
Umbra’s technology is being used in many of today’s biggest videogames such as Mass Effect 2, Lords of the Rings Online, Alan Wake, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, Grandia Online, EVE Online, Free Realms and Dragon Age II & Dragon Age Origins.
History
Umbra Software was spun off from Hybrid GraphicsHybrid Graphics
Hybrid Graphics Ltd., often "Hybrid", was a graphics software technology company active from 1994 to 2007 in Helsinki, Finland. Acquired by NVIDIA in 2006, Hybrid Graphics is now NVIDIA Corporation's Helsinki office.- Company history :...
in 2005. Umbra Software acquired Hybrid Graphics' dPVS
DPVS
dPVS by Umbra Software is an advanced computer graphics visibility optimization tool. Designed for developing games with large and dynamic [3D] worlds, dPVS computes visibility databases in real time...
and continued its development. The next generation of this technology, named Umbra, was a hardware accelerated occlusion culling middleware
Middleware
Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...
. Umbra was released in September 2007. In 2009, Umbra Occlusion Booster was released and it was optimized for multi-core systems such as Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
, PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
and PCs
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
.
In 2011 Umbra is working on Umbra3. Besides visibility optimization, the purpose of Umbra 3 is to increase frame rate and ease game development. Umbra 3 does this by optimizing critical parts of a game such as rendering and by providing tools to help with content streaming and game logic.
Umbra 3 builds an internal representation of a game scene and uses this data at runtime to perform efficient queries that can be used to e.g. determine the set of visible objects for the player or determine the set of objects that are within a given distance from a point.
In March 2010, Unity Technologies announced that the next release of Unity
Unity (game engine)
Unity is an integrated authoring tool for creating 3D video games or other interactive content such as architectural visualizations or real-time 3D animations. Unity's development environment runs on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, and the games it produces can be run on Windows, Mac, Xbox 360,...
would feature built-in occlusion culling preprocessing powered by Umbra. Unity Pro ships with Umbra's occlusion culling solution.
Products
Umbra Software has developed two products: Umbra Occlusion Booster. and Umbra3.Umbra Occlusion Booster is GPU
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
accelerated occlusion culling middleware for PC, Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
and PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
. This product was released in 2009.
Umbra3 is available for evaluation since spring 2011 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, PC, iOS and other platforms on request. Umbra3 integrates easily with Unreal Engine 3, Unity and Gamebryo as well as custom developed game engines. Umbra3 includes an improved version of Umbra Occlusion Booster now known simply as Umbra OB.