Recent improvements in graphics hardware and CPU power have allowed computer games to implement more and more realistic computer graphics techniques. This encounter between a massive consumer market and the computer graphics technology is significantly boosting both fields.

Computer graphics play a key role in providing computer games with the ever-increasing realism demanded by game players. Visibility, geometry, and lighting are some of the main areas involved in the development of a computer game. Hence, this project aims at developing new tools that will dramatically increase the realism and visual quality of computer games in these areas. New methods for computing visibility, both in a pre-processing step and on the fly, will be developed. They will be mainly used in highly dynamic and interactive outdoor scenes. In the domain of geometry, new specially fitted multiresolution models for complex geometries, such as plants and trees, will be created. To improve lighting simulation in digital games, real-time realistic global illumination effects will be provided.

The tools will be developed around the software that sits at the core of a computer game, the 3D engine. To achieve its goals, the consortium brings together European computer graphics research groups and game companies. As computer games techniques are very close to the ones used in the fields of Virtual Reality and simulation, two companies from these sectors also take part in the project. The modules developed by the research groups will be validated and tested by the game companies, and integrated into their in-house rendering systems to provide demonstrators showing the viability of the developed methods.