The Division trailer shows off Snowdrop engine

A newer, fancier generation of consoles means a new generation of newer, fancier game engines, and Ubisoft Massive's pretty pleased with its engine, Snowdrop. A new trailer shows off the tech powering Tom Clancy's The Division, and the developer has dished a few details on how it's "designed specifically for next-gen."

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A newer, fancier generation of consoles means a new generation of newer, fancier game engines, and Ubisoft Massive's pretty pleased with its engine, Snowdrop. A new trailer shows off the tech powering Tom Clancy's The Division, and the developer has dished a few details on how it's "designed specifically for next-gen."

"We re-evaluated the entire development workflow, and focused on trying to do things better, not bigger," and Snowdrop was part of the solution, Massive explained in a Q&A accompanying the trailer.

"Everything in this engine runs in real time, to avoid the usual baking time. The game and the editor are unified, enabling the developers to see exactly how their creations look in the game instantly. This allows us to have numerous iterations for each feature. The faster an idea can be implemented and tested, the more time we have to make it perfect for Tom Clancy's The Division."

It certainly helps that the engine's pretty too. Along with snazzy particle and lighting systems, Massive says it offers "the most realistic destruction system to date," with things being procedurally destroyed depending on what they're 'made' of. Which is important for cover-based combat.

A few new screenshots arrived alongside this new trailer showing off all the tech:

From The Chatty
  • reply
    December 9, 2013 6:00 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, The Division trailer shows off Snowdrop engine.

    A newer, fancier generation of consoles means a new generation of newer, fancier game engines, and Ubisoft Massive's pretty pleased with its engine, Snowdrop. A new trailer shows off the tech powering Tom Clancy's The Division, and the developer has dished a few details on how it's "designed specifically for next-gen."

    • reply
      December 9, 2013 7:47 AM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      December 9, 2013 8:13 AM

      Gotta say the destruction and lighting beat the pants off frostbite 3.

      The rest of the features feel about on par with each other.

    • reply
      December 9, 2013 9:19 AM

      It looks very impressive. I'd like to know what kind of hardware that demo was running on.

    • reply
      December 9, 2013 9:54 AM

      Destruction looks amazing.

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