Geomerics was a software company based in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, UK, that specialised in creating lighting technology for the

video game industry The video game industry encompasses the development, marketing, and monetization of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide. The video game industry has grown from niches to mainstream. , ...

. The company's main product was Enlighten, software code that calculates indirect lighting (" radiosity") in real-time for live action games running on systems such as the

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PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 in ...

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox series. It competed with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation ...

, and

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s. The company licensed this code to game companies for incorporation into their proprietary rendering engines. The software was ported to

Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...

CUDA CUDA (or Compute Unified Device Architecture) is a parallel computing platform and application programming interface (API) that allows software to use certain types of graphics processing units (GPUs) for general purpose processing, an approach ca ...

platform in 2011. The first system to incorporate the

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement co ...

was the Frostbite 2 engine, created by the EA

DICE Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing g ...

studio, used in ''

Battlefield 3 ''Battlefield 3'' is a 2011 first-person shooter video game developed by DICE (company), DICE and published by Electronic Arts for Windows, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It is a direct sequel to 2005's ''Battlefield 2''. In ''B ...

'' (2011) and '' Need for Speed: The Run'' (2011). Enlighten has also been licensed for a variety of other titles, including ''

Eve Online ''Eve Online'' (stylised ''EVE Online'') is a space-based, persistent world massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by CCP Games. Players of ''Eve Online'' can participate in a number of in-game profess ...

'', has an integration for

Unreal Engine Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game ''Unreal''. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of genres ...

3 & 4 and was built into

Unity Unity may refer to: Buildings * Unity Building, Oregon, Illinois, US; a historic building * Unity Building (Chicago), Illinois, US; a skyscraper * Unity Buildings, Liverpool, UK; two buildings in England * Unity Chapel, Wyoming, Wisconsin, US; a h ...

from version 5 to 2020 LTS. Advanced real-time global illumination system Enlighten has since become property of and is further developed by

Silicon Studio Silicon Studio is a Japanese computer graphics technology company and video game developer based in Tokyo. As a technology company, Silicon Studio has produced several products in the 3D computer graphics field, including middleware 3D computer ...

History

The company was formed by Angle PLC an LSE listed company (LSE:AGL) in 2005. The project was led by

Chris J. L. Doran Chris J. L. Doran is a physicist, Director of Studies in Natural Sciences for Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He founded Geomerics, and is its Chief Operating Officer. Doran obtained his Ph.D. in 1994 on the topic of ''Geometric Algebra and its ...

as a

spin out Spinout or Spin Out may refer to: *Corporate spin-off, also known as a spin-out, a type of corporate action where a company turns a portion of itself into a separate business *Spinout (driving), failure when braking Entertainment * ''Spinout (fil ...

from

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. Its Chief Executive included Gary Lewis, who prior to joining the company was the Global Chief Operating Officer at

Take 2 Interactive Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in New York City and founded by Ryan Brant in September 1993. The company owns two major publishing labels, Rockstar Games and 2K (company), 2K, which operat ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

. The development of Enlighten started in 2006 and saw major distribution with the release of ''

'' in 2011 and updates to ongoing

massively multiplayer online game A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG or more commonly MMO) is an online video game with a large number of players, often hundreds or thousands, on the same server. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent world, persistent open world, alt ...

''. According to the company, "Enlighten's revolutionary technology ensures that, for the first time, lighting can be updated in real time, in game, on today's consoles." In December 2013

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between the ...

, a Cambridge-based mobile CPU and GPU designer, acquired Geomerics, "for a number of reasons but foremost was Enlighten, Geomerics' award-winning technology for real-time lighting" said Dennis Laudick, ARM's vice president of partner marketing. The terms of the deal were not made public. In July 2014 Geomerics was awarded £1 million from the United Kingdom's Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to take the company's real-time graphics capabilities from computer gaming to film-making.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Geomerics website
(

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copy)
Silicon Studio Enlighten homepage
Software companies of the United Kingdom

History

See also

References

External links