EA has created a new studio called EA Gothenburg, based in Gothemburg, Sweden, which will focus on development of the Frostbite engine — the engine that powers Battlefield 3. DICE originally developed Frostbite for Bad Company, and Frostbite 2.0 for Battlefield 3. It’s one of the most advanced game engines in use today, with, as we know, great visuals and full environmental destruction, to mention a few features.

The engine was used in Need For Speed: The Run, and will power the upcoming Command & Conquer Generals 2, and in the new Medal of Honor: Warfighter. The new studio is currently hiring programmers and staff.

This should come as no surprise: DICE has trolled teased us Battlefield fans once again with a brief mention on Twitter. This time, it’s DICE gameplay designer Johan Andersson who Tweets:

“I have a “slight feeling” next week will be a very, very… shall we say, rewarding, week? ”

Coincidentally, next week is the Game Developers Conference, where a few DICE staffers will be present. Last year, DICE used GDC to talk about the Frostbite engine and we got some of the first peeks at Battlefield 3.

What will be announced/revealed is up in the air, as usual when it comes to DICE. Expect a few more vague “teasers” on Twitter before something is finally unveiled. New DLC? New Battlefield game? A new community manager? Who knows…

In a new interview with the official PlayStation Blog, DICE producer Patrick Liu spoke about the PlayStation 3 version of Battlefield 3, and how the team at DICE are handling the game. Liu said that, with Frostbite 2.0, DICE is pushing the PlayStation 3 hardware “big time”.

“We’re pushing the hardware big-time. Of course, we have a performance budget that we have to hit. Everything counts into that: the scale costs performance, destruction, animation, special effects…those are all the things we cram in there. I feel really good about where we ended up with on the PS3.”

Lui added that Frostbite 2.0 has a new streaming technology which allows them to build bigger maps, both interior and exterior locations. Despite the new technology and tools, Battlefield 3 is still limited to 24 players on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, compared to 64 players on PC.

Battlefield 3 is currently undergoing a large, public beta where hundreds of thousands of players are participating on consoles and PC.

It’s been disappointing for PC game modders that Battlefield 3 won’t ship with mod tools, because the new Frostbite 2.0 engine is simply too complex for modders to use, not to mention there are tricky licensing issues with third party software used in Frostbite.

But according to DICE’s general manager Karl-Magnus Troedsson, DICE has heard the community and their wishes, and said in recent interview with AusGamers,

“We have heard the community very loud and clear on this topic — that they want mod tools. We are considering it, back in the studio. The game won’t ship with mod tools, but we have heard it. I’m not saying that we’re going to do it, I’m saying that we are thinking about it.”

Troedsson also said that Battlefield 3 is “the biggest thing we’ve ever done”, and that they simply cannot do everything and add all features gamers demand. As he put it, “we have to select what it is we’re going to spend our focus on”.

Battlefield 2 didn’t ship with mod tools at launch either, the mod tools were released a few months after the game sipped. The tools allowed popular mods to emerge, mods like Point of Existence and Project Reality. Since then, mod support has been limited in Battlefield games.

A previous version of this article mentioned that Battlefield 2 shipped with mod tools. That is incorrect, mod tools for BF2 were released a few months after the game shipped.

Another trailer showcasing the awesome potential of the Frostbite 2.0 engine which powers Battlefield 3. With never before seen singleplayer footage, including urban tank battles, new locations (Paris), and much more.

At GDC, DICE have a number of technical presentations concerning their new Frostbite 2 engine, which powers Battlefield 3. One of the presentations, called “DirectX 11 Rendering in Battlefield 3″, goes into detail on the PC version of Battlefiled 3, and the DirectX 11 features it uses, such as Deferred Shading and SRAA antialiasing.

What caught our attention was also the talk of 3D support for Battlefield 3, of which one presentation slide was dedicated to, explaining how DICE incorporates 3D into the game. Battlefield 3 will support both Nvidia’s 3D Vision technology, and rival AMD’s HD3D. DICE will use “explicit 3D rendering”, which in essence means each frame is rendered to each eye, while retaining much of the image quality and detail that was in a regular 2D image.

3D on PCs of course requires a modern graphics card and a 3D monitor. There was no mention of 3D support on consoles.

DICE just held one of their talks at the Game Developer Conference, where they spoke about the new Frostbite 2 engine and its features. The screenshots show a new anti aliasing technology that Frostbite 2.0 employs, called “SRAA”, and how it compares to regular super sampling technology. Click the above image for a large view and compare for yourself — we see little difference, however, performance wise, the new Frostbite technology is said to be better, according to the GDC talk.

With the revelation of Battlefield 3, DICE has released some new information regarding the new engine that powers Battlefield 3. Called Frostbite 2.0, it looks like to be a big improvement over Frostbite 1.5, which powered Bad Company 2. These are the first confirmed details on Frostbite 2.0:

• Frostbite 2 will only support DirectX 10 and 11, as we reported.
• Frostbite 2.0 is recommended to run on 64-bit CPUs and versions of Windows
• The engine will have a new set of compilers and pipelines, which will improve its diversity and open the possibility to mod tools.
• Tile-based deferred shading via DirectCompute, which will improve performance.
• Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA), implemented with DirectCompute, which provides better bandwidth conservation (exclusive DirectX 11 feature).
• Realtime radiosity (a dynamic light source with HDR), powered by the Enlighten middleware engine, previously used in God of War 3 for the PS3
• Improved environment destruction.

On top of that, DICE released a video of a demonstration DICE engineer Per Einarsson did at SIGGRAPH 2010, showing the real-time radiosity and how it affects the light and surfaces, which you can see below:

In particular, look at the light sources (lamps etc.) in the video, and how the light is diffused on surfaces. Real-time radiosity is best suitable for indoor locations with several light sources, and provides better quality lighting with a minimal performance hit.

Lights and light sources in real-time radiosity are treated as dynamic, when this is done with regular global illumination techniques, the game takes a performance hit, however, real-time radiosity offers much of the same qualities at fractions of the performance cost.

Example: real-time radiosity can be used to achieve a real time day/night cycle in games — the time of the day can go from day, to dusk, and into the night, during the same gameplay session.

During our recent analysis of the new Frostbite 2.0 engine, it became more and more apparent that Windows XP and DirectX 9 weren’t mentioned in any of the technical specs, which made us question whether Battlefield 3 would support Windows XP at all.

Then we found this interesting tweet by DICE developer Johan Andersson:

Frostbite 2 is primarily developed for DX11. XP & DX9 is _not_ supported, 64-bit OS is recommended. Lots of time to upgrade if you havent!

While DICE hasn’t officially dismissed Win XP as a platform, a tweet like than from a Frostbite developer does carry some weight. According to Wikipedia, 44% or so of all PCs out there still use Win XP.

The Steam survey, which samples data from millions of Steam users, shows that 25% of gamers on Steam use Windows XP, a number which has been in steady decline. One things is certain: a lot of people will upgrade their hardware and OS once Battlefield 3 hits the streets, as it was the case with Battlefield 2 5 years ago.

Last week we reported that developer DICE will be holding a talk at the Game Developers Conference centered around Battlefield 3. Now GDC have updated their list to include two further DICE presentations:

SPU-based Deferred Shading in Battlefield 3 for Playstation 3, by Christina Coffin (DICE)
This session presents a detailed programmer oriented overview of our SPU based shading system implemented in DICE’s Frostbite 2 engine and how it enables more visually rich environments in Battlefield 3 and better performance over traditional GPU-only based renderers.

Culling the Battlefield: Data Oriented Design in Practice by Daniel Collin (DICE):
This talk will highlight the evolution of the object culling system used in the Frostbite engine over the years and why we decide to rewrite a system for Battlefield 3 that had worked well for 4 shipping titles.

You can find more details about the talks on GDC here and here. Both talks are available with the GDC All Access Pass, which costs $1,500. GDC takes place in late march – early April 2011.