The UK-based Climax Group has today unveiled its next-generation game development engine. The cross-platform Blimey 2 engine, which was created by the company's core technology group (CTG), replaces the existing Blimey engine that was used in the development of such games as MotoGP, MotoGP 2, Hot Wheels: World Race, The Italian Job: LA Heist, ATV Quad Power Racing 2, and Rally Fusion for the PC and all current-generation consoles.

　　"The Blimey engine has served us well over the last couple years, but Blimey 2 takes us to another level," said Karl Jeffery, CEO of Climax. "It's more powerful, more adaptable, and, most importantly, it keeps us ahead of the competition. We've already got games in development that are using Blimey 2, and we're ready now for PS3, Xbox 2, PSP, and any other next-generation games platform."

　　Climax believes that using cross-platform development engines such as Blimey 2 allows its developers to concentrate on making the best games possible, without having to worry about the hardware platform. Improvements implemented for Blimey 2 include state-of-the-art sound rendering, advanced AI framework and library for all racing games, cross-platform online support, full-screen effects such as motion blur and depth of field, and highly optimized four-pass rendering allowing for base textures, environment maps, specular highlights, and damage, scratches, and scrapes. The performance specs of Climax's new Blimey 2 engine are as follows:

　　Four-pass renderer - 12 million polys/sec

　　Sprite renderer - 6 million sprites/sec (12 million polys/sec), fully textured

　　Terrain renderer - 10 million polys/sec

　　Textures - 12MB per frame, fully managed

　　Xbox - Full usage of both pixel and vertex shaders

　　Hundreds of interactive objects in one scene

　　32 players online

　　Climax hasn't revealed which of its games currently in development are using the Blimey 2 engine, but we'll bring you more information as soon as it becomes available.