With GDC now just a week away, the announcements of what will be shown at the annual conference in San Fransisco will be coming in fast and furious. Today Epic Games announced that a number of new features that will be added to their Unreal Engine 3 tech will be shown for the first time at GDC.

Among the new additions will be Unreal Lightmass which will add "high-quality static lighting with next-generation effects, such as: soft shadows with accurate penumbrae; diffuse and specular interreflection; and color bleeding." Another new feature is a content browser and search feature that will allow artists and designers to find content for their games quicker.

In a bit of a reference to the movie Tron, Epic Games plans to add the new Unreal Master Control Program (MCP) which will add a "high-reliability online service architecture supporting announcements, settings management, online population tracking, and data collection for hardware, profile, and game stats."

[via email press release]