text: In this paper we present a framework for the rendering of dynamic 3D virtual environments which can be integrated in the development of videogames. It includes methods to manage sounds and particle effects, paged static geometries, the support of a physics engine and various input systems. It has been designed with a modular structure to allow future expansions. We exploited some open-source state-of-the-art components such as OGRE, PhysX, ParticleUniverse, etc.; all of them have been properly integrated to obtain peculiar physical and environmental effects. The stand-alone version of the application is fully compatible with Direct3D and OpenGL APIs and adopts OpenAL APIs to manage audio cards. Concluding, we devised a showcase demo which reproduces a dynamic 3D environment, including some particular effects: the alternation of day and night influencing the lighting of the scene, the rendering of terrain, water and vegetation, the reproduction of sounds and atmospheric agents.
  @cite_4: Lighting and material are very important aspects of the visual appearances of games and they present some of the hardest challenges in real time graphics today. For Halo and indeed many other games, keeping the players immersed in the virtual environment for long periods of time is a top priority of the graphics system, and good quality lighting and realistic materials are the fundamental building blocks for achieving the level of realism necessary to accomplish this goal.
summary: An overview of Halo 3 's unique lighting and material system and its main components is treated in @cite_4 . Halo includes key innovations in the following areas: spherical harmonics lightmap generation, compression and rendering; rendering complex materials under area light sources; HDR rendering and post-processing. Some of the effects presented in that work have been adopted also here (e.g. the HDR rendering).