New DirectX 9 benchmark set to make a splash

WE HEAR that one anonymous company is developing a game and a benchmark based on a boat-racing story line. We've been hearing this for a while now, but the company at the bottom of it all still wants to remain secretive. We won't name then yet, in order to keep them sweet.

The benchmark will see the light of day in next few weeks. It will be called Rydermark 2006 and it is set to support both Shader model 2.0 and 3.0. It will use heavily multithreaded Sahara game engine with multiprocessor support. It is interesting to see support for Parallax Occlusion Mapping.

The company will use a different approach from typical Parallax Mapping, as the guys solved the aliasing artefacts problem that usually shows up when you use this technique. It will also run at Shade model 2.0 hardware.

The benchmark will also feature 64-bit (HDR) High Dynamic Range Lighting with Anti-aliasing, soft shadows, intense GPU-accelerated 3D particle systems, dynamic reflections and refraction, full scene motion blur, depth of field high resolution textures, 5.1 surround sound; Yada, yada.

We have a picture for you and we hope to get our hands on the benchmarking suite itself soon. µ