Interactive Data Visualization (IDV) announced today that SpeedTreeRT, its hardware independent foliage solution, has been integrated with Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3. Unreal Engine licensees will now have access to SpeedTreeRT's advanced content creation options, enabling them to quickly and efficiently populate game environments with highly detailed trees and foliage.

SpeedTreeRT delivers low-polygon, highly realistic trees and plants, with adjustable wind effects, seamless LOD transitions, and a library of hundreds of tree models from more than 100 species.

SpeedTreeRT also includes SpeedTree CAD, which will enable Unreal Engine licensees to create and edit animated trees in real-time. SpeedTree technology has also been integrated into the Unreal Engine's decolayers, so forests can be painted directly onto the terrain, eliminating the need to place trees individually. Although the trees appear at unprecedented detail, thanks to the efficiency of the SpeedTree technology, any foliage will have a minimum impact on frame rates.

"Unreal Engine 3 features a number of important new features and tools, including a new material editing system that we were able to exploit with outstanding results. We were also able to take full advantage of its innovative new material editor and achieved amazing new per-pixel lighting effects," said IDV Vice-President Michael Sechrest.

Mark Rein, Vice President of Epic Games Inc., agreed that the screenshots provide an impressive early view of the quality environments SpeedTreeRT will help build with Unreal Engine 3. "The new screen shots are a great indication of where things are heading for SpeedTreeRT's Unreal Engine 3 integration," Rein said. "I expect many of our licensees will want to test-drive the SpeedTreeRT's evaluation version when it becomes available."

IDV plans to publicly release a real-time demo featuring the Unreal Engine 3 integration later this year.

Pricing:- The Unreal Engine 2 version of SpeedTreeRT licenses for $9,995. The license fee for SpeedTreeRT Unreal Engine 3 is expected to be comparable.