Panta Rhei (game engine)
| Developer(s) | Capcom |
|---|---|
| Platform | PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows |
| Type | Game engine |
Panta Rhei (named after the English transliteration Panta rhei), is a video game engine developed by Capcom, for use with 8th generation consoles: PlayStation 4, Xbox One; as a replacement for its previous MT Framework engine.
Following years of Capcom using their proprietary MT Framework engine for video game development during the seventh generation of hardware, it was decided that to maximize productivity in the following generation of hardware it would be necessary to create a new development engine, now titled "Panta Rhei". This was intended for home consoles while games for Smartphones, PlayStation Vita and Nintendo 3DS still use the MT Framework Mobile & Lite engines.
Specific design aims for the new engine included increases in workflow efficiency by reducing iteration time for modifications to gameplay and game design. Additionally, the engine introduced improved physical modeling of fluids and emphasis on global illumination rendering.Development of a new engine began in summer 2011. Features of the new development engine included: in-engine management of shader (GPU) programs; an engine virtual machine allowing game scripting to be written initially in C#; changes in organization of the workflow/content meant that backwards compatibility with the MT Framework engine was lost. The engine corresponds to DirectX 11 level of technology.
The initial game to be developed with Panta Rhei was Deep Down, whose team provided feedback on the engine development; development of the game and engine were carried out in parallel. A trailer for Deep Down and the Panta Rhei engine were publicly demonstrated by Yoshinori Ono at the PlayStation 4 unveiling event in Feb. 2013., the 'Deep Down' technology demo used ~3GB of textures, with 30 shaders, running at approximately 30 frames per second. Graphics techniques used in the 'Deep Down' demo included tessellation (actors cloak); with deferred rendering implementing dynamic lightsources; and surfaces rendered including diffuse and specular light reflections with surface roughness implemented by the Oren–Nayar reflectance model; global illumination calculations (such as light from a dragon's fiery breath) were estimated using the 'voxel cone tracing' method (with 1 specular 'ray' and an approximation to 12 dodecahedrally situated 'rays', sampled at a lower resolution, for diffuse reflectance); moving light sources including flames were modeled using a 64x64x64 voxel (voxel cube size ~0.5m) implemented as 3D textures stored in a Mipmap like structure.
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