Power Render X

Q: Tell us about Power Render X and how it came about.

A: Power Render X was initially inspired by Bungie's Halo for the XBox. I was impressed with the per pixel lighting and bump mapping on everything in the game. It started out as an experiment to see if I could duplicate Halo's rendering capabilities using our base engine's shader functionality. Once this was in place it was decided to develop a complete game engine around the technology that would push the limits of future hardware.

Q: What new ideas / features did you bring to Power Render X?

A: We have a unified rendering path where everything casts shadows and has per pixel bump mapping, ambient reflections, and specular highlights. The scene begins in total blackness and lights are added. Everything uses per pixel attenuation and there are no lightmaps or precalculated lighting like the engines of the past. Most of the ideas aren't new. It's really more about making them accessible to level designers. With the new engine artists have a lot more texture content to deal with since each surface has up to 7 related textures. Building a level editor which helps organize the content and visualize it quickly has been a major part of the development.

Q: Which competitive engines are you keeping an eye on and how does Power Render X compare?

A: The only engine that is in the same league as Power Render X right now is the Doom3 engine from id software. Most new games being released today are not using per pixel lighting and shadows even though we have capable hardware. By creating an engine that pushes the limits of today's hardware we are hoping to provide the best engine for more advanced games in the years ahead.

Q: What graphic tools were used in developing Power Render X?

A: 3DS MAX, Character Studio and Photoshop are the main tools being used to create content.

Q: What Hardware 3D features does Power Render X support?

A: Vertex and pixel shaders, Dot3 and cubic bump mapping, cube maps, stencil shadows, and projected textures.

Q: Can you give us some examples of how Power Render X takes advantage of those features?

A: Ambient reflections using cube maps give surfaces a shiny look while making bump maps more visible. Every light uses per pixel dot3 bump mapping and stencil shadows, along with per pixel attenuation. Lights can optionally have a projected texture for softer shadow effects. Early development shots with programmer art are available on the PR-X web site.

Q: What feature of the Radeon 8500 do you like the most? And why?

A: PS 1.4 and 6 textures stages. This gives more freedom to combine rendering passes and speed up the engine.

Q: If you could ask for only one new 3D feature, what would that be? And how would you use that in your engine?

A: Not so much a new feature, but more fill rate and faster pixel shaders. This is critical to Power Render X since shadow volumes require lots of fill rate, and each surface is drawn with several passes of pixel shaders.

Q: If you could sum up how much the Radeon 8500 improves Power Render X in one sentence, what would you say?

A: Radeon 8500's pixel shader support lets Power Render X draw fewer passes and draw them faster than the competition.

Q: If you could sum up your view on ATI's future in 3D, what would that be?

A: I see ATI and Nvidia battling for top place in the consumer 3D market for many years in the future, with other companies not even close. ATI has shown they know their stuff and will continue to bring new innovations and create quality products for a long time.

Q: Gives us a brief history of Egerter Software.

A: Egerter Software was founded 1992 by my brother and I. We were both interested in computer programming, games, and graphics. Over the years we have released many different products, ranging from development libraries, paint programs, 3D engines, sound tools, and computer games. The primary product now is Power Render, which is a general purpose 3D engine originally designed for cross platform use. It started out as a DOS based engine with 8 bit color in VGA/SVGA, and has evolved with the times to use Glide, OpenGL, and finally Direct3D. There has been a huge amount of man hours and dedication put into this product. Power Render X is an even higher level engine built on Power Render to provide a complete engine and editor for future indoor games using per pixel lighting effects.

Q: What do you think is Egerter Software's 1 key advantage above other developers?

A: Experience. Not many other middleware companies around today can say they had an engine before DirectX and OpenGL were available on the PC. We've made our own transformation and triangle rasterization pipelines from scratch (even though they aren't used in the latest engine) and are extremely knowledgeable in 3D graphics algorithms. We have followed 3D technology trends for years and continue to implement them in our products.

Q: Tell us a bit about the people who developed Power Render X?

A: Power Render has been mostly developed by myself. A few customers have contributed plugins and new routines for the engine as well. Most of my time is spent on research and development for Power Render. I have also done contract/full time work on games now and then for a change of pace, the most recent being Adventure Pinball for Digital Extremes using the Unreal engine. This kind of experience while working closely with content developers helps me in creating a better engine for programmers and artists to use.

Q: How long did the development take for Power Render X?

A: Development started around January 2002, which makes it about six months so far. Of course we already had our base PR engine built over the past 8 years to work from. Most of the time has been spent on getting the rendering engine and shaders working, and the editor to build the content.

Q: What were the best and worst moments during that time?

A: The best moment was just a couple of weeks ago when we replaced our shadow maps to shadow volumes using stencil buffers. This allowed unlimited viewing distances and multiple dynamic shadows without any rendering artifacts. It truly was a rewarding thing to see it running at decent speeds and programmed so quickly (less than a day using the routines from PR). The worst moment was probably watching the Doom3 video from E3 2002 and realizing we need to change a few things in order to be competitive with their engine. However I believe we are on the right track now after the recent development efforts.

Q: How do you decide which graphic features to support in a title given the development time of your titles?

A: Being a middleware developer it is important to expose as many 3D hardware features to our customers as possible. It is important to use to work closely with ATI and other 3D related companies to keep up with the latest trends.

Q: How closely have you been working with ATI and how do you see that continuing going forward?

A: ATI has provided us with old and new video cards for testing. This helps make the engine more stable and also lets us work on new features before the cards are available to consumers and other developers.

Q: What is next for Egerter Software and Power Render X?

A: The primary goal is to get PR-X in a usable state and in the hands of developers who will create outstanding games. In the future we will probably be optimizing our base engine further and perhaps do some console ports.

Q: Any exclusive parting hints / comments on upcoming titles you wish to share?

A: Only a few teams will be allowed to use Power Render X initially while development is still heavy. Any company seriously interested should contact us soon if they want a chance to use the engine.

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