Presented by GAME DEVELOPER magazine, the fifth annual Front Line Awards recognize those software and hardware companies whose tools enable faster and more efficient game creation for advancing the state of the art. Discreet's 3ds max 5 software received the "Front Line Award" in the art category, along with Adobe's Photoshop 7 and AI Implant from BioGraphic Technologies. The art award is based on selective criteria including utility, innovation, value and ease of use. 3ds max has been honored with four Front Line Awards, which are bestowed by Game Developer Magazine's panel of experts in 3D game development, software and tools. The other 2002 Front Line Award winners are: Codewarrior Wireless Studio 7 by Metrowerks; Real-Time Rendering, 2nd Edition by Tomas Akenine-Moller and Eric Haines (A.K. Peters); and NVIDIA's Cg Shader Language in the Programming category; excellence in Game Components went to Havok's Game Dynamics Toolkit; Altiverb 2.0 by AudioEase took honors in the Audio category; and ATI's Radeon 9700 and the Cintiq 18SX Tablet by Wacom were best in the Hardware category. The Hall of Fame Inductee was Microsoft's DirectX.
