The IW engine is a

game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software ...

created and developed by

Infinity Ward Infinity Ward, Inc. is an American video game developer. They developed the video game ''Call of Duty'', along with seven other installments in the ''Call of Duty'' series. Vince Zampella, Grant Collier, and Jason West established Infinity War ...

for the ''Call of Duty'' series. The engine was originally based on

id Tech 3 id Tech 3, popularly known as the ''Quake III Arena'' engine, is a game engine developed by id Software for their video game ''Quake III Arena''. It has been adopted by numerous games. During its time, it competed with the Unreal Engine; bot ...

. Aside from Infinity Ward, the engine is also used by other

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one ...

studios working on the series, including primary lead developers Treyarch and

Sledgehammer Games Sledgehammer Games, Inc. is an American video game developer company formed in 2009 by Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey. The pair formerly worked at Visceral Games and are responsible for the creation of ''Dead Space (2008 video game), Dead Sp ...

, and support studios like

Beenox Beenox Inc. is a Canadian video game developer established in 2000 in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. The studio became a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision on May 25, 2005. History Between 2003 and 2006, the developer was essentially a porting ...

High Moon Studios High Moon Studios, Inc. (formerly Sammy Entertainment Inc. and Sammy Studios, Inc.) is an American video game developer initially formed in 2001. After nearly a year as an independent studio, the developer was acquired by Vivendi Games in Janua ...

, and

Raven Software Raven Software Corporation is an American video game developer based in Wisconsin and founded in 1990. In 1997, Raven made an exclusive publishing deal with Activision and was subsequently acquired by them. After the acquisition, many of the stu ...

History

IW 2.0 to IW 3.0

The engine has been distinct from the

engine on which it is based since ''

Call of Duty 2 ''Call of Duty 2'' is a 2005 first-person shooter video game developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision in most regions of the world. It is the second installment of the ''Call of Duty'' series. Announced by Activision on April 7, ...

'' in 2005. The engine's name was not publicized until IGN was told at the

E3 2009 The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009 (E3 2009) was the 15th E3 held. The event took place at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, California. It began on June 2, 2009, and ended on June 4, 2009, with 41,000 total attendees. Majo ...

by the studio that '' Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2'' would run on the "IW 4.0 engine". Development of the engine and the ''Call of Duty'' games has resulted in the inclusion of advanced graphical features while maintaining an average of 60 frames per second on the consoles and PC. '' Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare'' was released using version 3.0 of the engine. This game included features such as bullet penetration, improved AI, lighting engine upgrades,

particle system A particle system is a technique in game physics, motion graphics, and computer graphics that uses many minute sprites, 3D models, or other graphic objects to simulate certain kinds of "fuzzy" phenomena, which are otherwise very hard to repr ...

enhancements and many more improvements. Treyarch began using an enhanced version of the IW 3.0 engine for '' Call of Duty: World at War''. Improvements were made to the physics model and

dismemberment Dismemberment is the act of cutting, ripping, tearing, pulling, wrenching or otherwise disconnecting the limbs from a living or dead being. It has been practiced upon human beings as a form of capital punishment, especially in connection with ...

was added. Environments also featured more destructibility and could be set alight using a flamethrower. The flamethrower featured propagating fire and it was able to burn skin and clothes realistically. Treyarch modified the engine for their James Bond title, '' 007: Quantum of Solace''.

IW 4.0 to IW 5.0

'' Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2'' was released using the IW 4.0 engine, the only game to do so. The IW 4.0 engine featured texture streaming technology to create much higher environmental detail without sacrificing performance. '' Call of Duty: Black Ops'' was not based on IW 4.0; rather, Treyarch further enhanced the version of IW 3.0 they had used in their previous game. This version of the engine also featured streaming technology, lighting enhancements, and support for 3D imaging. '' Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3'' utilizes an improved version of the IW 4.0 engine. Improvements on the engine allow better streaming technology which allows larger regions for the game while running at a minimum of 60

frames per second A frame is often a structural system that supports other components of a physical construction and/or steel frame that limits the construction's extent. Frame and FRAME may also refer to: Physical objects In building construction *Framing (con ...

. Further improvements to the audio and lighting engines have been made in this version. '' Call of Duty: Black Ops II'' was developed using a further iteration of the IW engine. Texture blending has been improved due to a new technology called "reveal mapping" which compares tones between two textures and then blends them together. Also, there have been upgrades to the lighting engine which include HDR lighting, bounce lighting,

self-shadowing Self-Shadowing is a computer graphics lighting effect, used in 3D rendering applications such as computer animation and video games. Self-shadowing allows non-static objects in the environment, such as game characters and interactive objects ...

, intersecting shadows and various other improvements. ''Call of Duty: Black Ops II'' takes advantage of

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

11 video cards on the Windows version of the game. The "zombie" mode has been moved to the multiplayer portion of the engine which will allow for much more variety within this part of the game.

IW 6.0 to IW 7.0

'' Call of Duty: Ghosts'' features an upgraded version of the IW 5.0 seen in '' Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3''. It is unknown at this time whether or not any engine features have been taken from '' Call of Duty: Black Ops II''. Since the main developer is Infinity Ward they have returned to their original engine naming system and called this iteration IW 6.0. IW 6.0 is compatible with next-gen systems such as Xbox One and PlayStation 4 so polygon counts, texture detail and overall graphical fidelity has been increased. IW 6.0 is also compatible with Microsoft Windows, Wii U, PS3 and Xbox 360. The IW 6.0 engine features technology from Pixar, SubD, which increases the level of detail of models as one gets closer to them. Mark Rubin has said about the HDR lighting "We used to paint it in and cover up the cracks, but now it's all real-time". ''Ghosts'' uses Iris Adjust tech which allows the player to experience from a person's point of view how their eyes would react to changes in lighting conditions realistically. Other features include new animation systems, fluid dynamics, interactive smoke,

displacement mapping Displacement mapping is an alternative computer graphics technique in contrast to bump, normal, and parallax mapping, using a texture or height map to cause an effect where the actual geometric position of points over the textured surface are ' ...

and dynamic multiplayer maps. '' Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare'' features Sledgehammer Games' in-house custom engine with only a few lines of legacy code remaining from the IW engine. Majority of the engine in ''Advanced Warfare'' had been built from the ground up. Developer Sledgehammer Games incorporated brand new animation, physics, rendering, lighting, motion capture and facial animation systems. '' Call of Duty: Black Ops III'' uses a highly upgraded version of the engine used in ''Black Ops II''. '' Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare''s IW 7.0 features

weightlessness Weightlessness is the complete or near-complete absence of the sensation of weight. It is also termed zero gravity, zero G-force, or zero-G. Weight is a measurement of the force on an object at rest in a relatively strong gravitational fie ...

system,

game physics Computer animation physics or game physics are laws of physics as they are defined within a simulation or video game, and the programming logic used to implement these laws. Game physics vary greatly in their degree of similarity to real-world phy ...

improvement, improved AI and improved

non-player character A non-player character (NPC), or non-playable character, is any character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster ...

s behaviors. '' Call of Duty: WWII'' uses an enhanced version of Sledgehammer Games' in-house custom engine from ''Advanced Warfare''. For '' Call of Duty: Black Ops 4'', Treyarch heavily modified the engine used in ''Black Ops III'' to support up to 100 players, and introduced a new 'Super Terrain' system.

IW 8.0 to IW 9.0

With '' Call of Duty: Modern Warfare'' and '' Call of Duty: Warzone'', Infinity Ward employed their Poland studio to rebuild the engine completely. Dubbed IW 8.0, the engine was created within five years, and feature substantial upgrades such as spectral rendering, volumetric lighting and support for hardware-accelerated ray tracing on the PC version. Support for

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 ...

's Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) was added later in April 2021. Activision has stated that the new engine is also shared across the board for all Call of Duty developers to use in future titles. '' Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War'' does not use this new engine, but instead uses a highly modified version of the ''Black Ops III'' engine. '' Call of Duty: Vanguard'' is powered by the same engine used in ''Modern Warfare'' and ''Warzone'' with enhancements from developer Sledgehammer Games. '' Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II'' is developed on a highly upgraded version of the engine first used in 2019's ''Modern Warfare''. Dubbed IW 9.0, the engine is co-developed by Infinity Ward, Treyarch, and Sledgehammer Games, and will be used in future installments of the series in a unified effort to ensure that every studio is working with the same tools.

Games using IW engine

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Iw Engine 2005 software 3D graphics software Activision Proprietary software Video game engines fr:Infinity Ward#Moteur de jeu