Epic shows off Unreal Engine 3 upgrades

execs from Epic Games unveiled new improvements to Unreal Engine 3 during Microsoft’s GDC keynote today.

Co-founder Tim Sweeney outlined a number of the "significant" changes, saying "we never stop working on new features for Unreal Engine. It’s always a work in progress".

Key additions to UE3 include ambient occlusion technology and advanced character lighting with Sweeney commenting, "We’ve done significant work on the character pipeline."

The new UE also "enables us to render much more characters in scenes", renders dynamic fluid surfaces for water and particle systems and has been "substantially improved to give artists movie-director style controls" with improvements to the cinematic creator Matinee.

Soft body physics using Ageia’s PhysX and better support for destructible environments have also been integrated into Unreal Engine 3.