GDC Europe, held in Cologne from August 16-18,

Stonetrip’s CEO Philip Belhassen was invited to take part in the 3D engine shoot out panel led by Mark DeLoura, who was then at Google.

The panel comprised some of the leading players in the 3D engine sector: Mark Rein (Epic Games’ Unreal Engine), Joe Kreiner (Terminal Reality’s Infernal Engine), Carl Jones (Crytek’s CryEngine), Philip Belhassen (StoneTrip’s ShivaEngine) and David Helgason (Unity Technologies’ Unity Engine).

The session was well-attended, with a range of views and issues debated by the panel. Philip Belhassen took the opportunity to speak about the new plug-in features that will be included in ShiVa 3D v1.9, expected at the end of September. Philip explained the benefits of this plug-in integration, as developers and Stonetrip partners will be able to increase the abilities of the Shiva engine for all their specific requirements.

Later Mark DeLoura brought up the question of common languages such as Lua as utilized by CryEngine and Shiva, among others.

The panel discussed the future development of gaming on mobile handsets. With iPhone, Palm, and Android, ShiVa is already the most versatile cross-platform engine for mobile gaming, enabling our developers to deliver games to the biggest audience.

The next generation of tablets, with iPad, and planned Android pads for the end of the year, will be a new source of games for consumers. ShiVa is already supporting these devices and will be ready for the new platforms as they are launched.