Oxide’s Star Swarm Mantle Benchmark Is Now Available On Steam


As we told you a couple of hours ago, the Star Swarm Mantle benchmark of Oxide Games was meant to hit the Internet this month. So, here it is. Star Swarm is now available and can be downloaded via Steam. AMD has not released yet the 14.1 drivers that bring support for this new API, so now is the perfect time to download the benchmark and get yourselves ready for them.

As described, Star Swarm is a real-time demo of Oxide Games’ Nitrous engine, which pits two AI-controlled fleets against each other in a furious space battle. Originally conceived as an internal stress test, Oxide decided to release Star Swarm so that the public can share our vision of what we think the future of gaming can be. The simulation in Star Swarm shows off Nitrous’ ability to have thousands of individual units onscreen at once, each running their own physics, AI, pathfinding, and threat assessments.

Those interested can download Star Swarm from Steam.

Here are the key features of Star Swarm:

  • Up to 10,000+ units onscreen at once – Imagine what kind of games can be made when developers can count on simulating battles and scenes at this scale

  • First look at AMD’s Mantle technology – See the performance benefits of AMD’s new API layer for yourself if you have compatible (Graphics Core Next-based) hardware

  • Benchmark mode generates performance information – Since Star Swarm is a dynamic simulation rather than a canned demo, run it several times to see what Nitrous’ real-world gaming performance is on your machine

  • Film-style rendering – Nitrous uses Object Space Lighting, which renders objects onscreen using the same techniques used by the film industry, including real-time film quality motion blur, on your PC

Star Swarm Demonstration