socialmedian: Tired of benchmarks, Futuremark launches its own 3-D online game

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Tired of benchmarks, Futuremark launches its own 3-D online game

Source: VentureBeat

Nov 04, 2009

Summary

Futuremark made a name for itself by creating benchmarks that measured exactly how fast a personal computer could run a game with rich 3-D graphics. Its benchmarks were the gold standard that helped game fanatics buy the computer that was a match for the best games.

Now the company is publishing its own multiplayer online game, Shattered Horizon, on the PC. It’s only logical. Futuremark’s 3DMark and PCMark benchmarks — which are software programs that test the hardware in a PC — were huge investments that required the work of talented game developers and engineers. You see, the benchmarks had to run on computers and measure their exact performance. The benchmark had to stress every new feature of a the latest graphics technology. Those benchmarks have now been run more than 30 million times.

The fact that the company could pull this off is no small achievement. But it shot for a high-end graphics target and used the expertise that it cultivated over more than a decade. Everybody bemoans the high cost of making high-quality 3-D games these days. But Futuremark m