Well the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) 2009 is almost upon us (a week away) and news is just beginning to pop up concerning plans for the event. First up, Epic Games has announced that they will debut the newest version of the Unreal Engine 3 that will power games for the PS3, 360, and PC. Warning, tech-speak ahead…

“Unreal Lightmass, a new global illumination solver, will be shown for the first time at GDC. Unreal Lightmass produces high-quality static lighting with next-generation effects, such as: soft shadows with accurate penumbrae; diffuse and specular interreflection; and color bleeding. Furthermore, Epic’s new Swarm distributed computing framework enables lighting to be generated up to 10 times faster. The new lighting features are bundled with Unreal Engine 3 and benefit all current and future engine licensees. Like all of Epic’s engine features, Unreal Lightmass is available at no additional cost to licensees.”

The engine now also features a new content browser and search engine which allows developers to quickly find game assets with the help of content tagging and thumbnail previews.

“We looked at how easy it was to search the net with Google, and find photos on Flickr, and redesigned Unreal Engine 3’s content searching and tagging along those lines,” said Tim Sweeney, chief executive officer and technical director of Epic Games. “The result was a productivity boon for artists and designers.”

Interesting stuff indeed, it will be fun to see how these upgrades affect the games that will utilize the Unreal Engine 3. Stay tuned for more information!