Graphics software technology company, Umbra Software, announced today that highly-anticipated MMO Guild Wars 2 is taking advantage of Umbra's occlusion culling technology.

Integrating Umbra's state of the art rendering optimization technology early on in development, ArenaNet is making sure that Guild Wars 2's beautiful world of Tyria is set in is realized in the "most optimized fashion possible".

What exactly does that mean for Guild Wars 2? Umbra 3 is a rendering and performance optimizing middleware that is being used to "improve frame rates and help create visually striking game worlds". It does this by optimizing critical parts of the game like rendering, audio and game logic and automatically generating portals for game environments, freeing up time for the game artists.

“Umbra 3 provides an excellent solution for our expansive, open world environments. We are very happy with the choice we made with Umbra and the support we’ve been given by the Umbra team” said Patrick Laukaitis; the Senior Software Engineer at ArenaNet who has worked closely with Umbra’s engineering team throughout the production of Guild Wars 2.

“ArenaNet are one of Umbra’s earliest clients and closest partners, so we are excited to see the game nearing completion," added Umbra’s Chief Technology Officer Otso Mäkinen. "Guild Wars 2 is epic in scope, so it’s been a fun challenge to meet the technological needs of Patrick and his team; they’ve really pushed us to take our middleware to the next level."

ArenaNet isn't the only one taking advantage of Umbra's technology. Bungie, BioWare, Giant, IO Interactive, Square Enix, and Sony Online Entertainment are just a few of many utilizing Umbra's technology.