Considering the percentage of games released every year powered by the Unreal Engine 3, Epic might have a point. Upgraded features to UE3 don’t just mean Epic will have prettier games. It means a major chunk of developers will suddenly gain access to these enhanced tools, rendering cigarettes so real I want to light up and robot monstrosities you can almost reach out and touch, which would likely be a bad idea.
These images are from a trailer being shown off at GDC this week, which should be dropping on the general public next week with the weight of a killer mech.
Jakob Smolinski
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 11:50 AMGames are getting sooo shiny and pretty these days, its good to see Epic pushing the boundaries!
Lyndon L
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 6:26 PMIt’s good to see games/engines being made to PC’s abilities, not limited to console’s abilities.
Alastair
Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 11:12 AMIt’s not good to see them being made to Windows users’ concentration spans in regards to story and gameplay types (FPS or RTS).
♣TadMod♣
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:00 PMIt’s funny how every one of these effects (excpet reflections, but I may be mistaken) are already implemented in Cryengine 2.
Methinks Epic are lagging behind a tad…
bobsquiggles
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 7:15 PMTrue, but where I hope it stands out is functionality. Cryengine 2 was ahead of it’s time, but it killed PC’s, which really held it back imo.
Adam Bax
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:05 PMholy crap…that SSS looks badass, running this in real time would take a beast of a machine..
Stuart Skene
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:11 PMThe more realistic the more chance of RC
Oliver Charlton
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 2:05 PMWhat’s RC?
Dustin
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 2:27 PMRefused Classification, the depiction of violence might be too realistic for our classification board to handle :(.
James Mac
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 3:57 PMRefused Classification.
#35
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:18 PM@TadMod, sure CryEngine # looks awesome, and probably has already implemented a lot of these features, but the CryTek engine is an absolute hardware killer to run.
Unreal engine is hugely popular with devs because it has a good balance between looking good, and being able to run on almost any hardware.
In the end, I think that Epic’s game engines are just better written than most. not the best looking (unless the above screens are accurate), but if Epic have stayed with the methods of how they built the Unreal 3 engine, it’ll look and run far better than CryEngine running on a lower spec PC. which is a win for all.
kkagari
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:21 PMthe last picture should be captioned as
Product Placement
warcroft
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:26 PML.A. Noir is the future.
Its not all about making it super detailed, its about looking real.
Sure, the models in L.A. Noir are simple in comparison to whats above but facial effects make it so realistic.
You can detail the hell out of models, but most will still have the blank expressionless face and the zombie look in their eyes.
Blackwater
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 1:09 PMI’d rather developers get the hell away from trying to make games “real”
“realistic” looking games age terribly and are only fun to look at for the first ten minutes.
How about some goddamn artistic design for once, getting sick of Gritty and Realistic
Camilo Cayazaya
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 2:08 PMAmen to that.
Lyndon L
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 6:25 PMBrink :D
Glen Bruton
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 10:57 PMcant we have both types?
Stinger
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:31 PMPlease give us proper lighting, anything can look pretty when it’s completely black/brown.
I won’t deny that it’s a nice looking noir atmosphere, but I can hardly call it amazing tech when I can barely see anything.
Peter Richards
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:34 PMI’m excited by the bokeh depth of field, it looks so much better than the standard DOF implementations, and is a great tool for leading the eye to the point of interest, as well as giving a cinematic feel the the whole gaming experience.
Sergei
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:35 PMSo Unreal 3 can finally render hair?
Choc
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:49 PMTime to remake that westwood blade runner game with this engine
its bloody perfect for it.
MadDogMike
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 2:00 PMWow, so I’m not the only one that was immediately reminded of blade runner by these screens.
And hell yes, a remake would be awesome. Blade Runner was one of the most impressive and memorable games of my childhood.
Also, those graphical effects/techniques already exist in games, but they aren’t what makes these screenshots look good. High polygon models and smooth pre-defined animations will always look good, but they just aren’t practical for real-time 3D games.
milali
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 12:56 PMnothing beats unreal for the mature toolset.
Spandexman
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 1:13 PMSo the next gen will be as brown and dull as the current gen eh? I really hope not!
Camilo Cayazaya
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 2:12 PMActually, now it’s going to be grey and dull.
And apparently, incredibly shiny. Why does everything reflect so much? GOD I hate the future.
Aidan Dullard
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 6:22 PM+1
Where’s the colour? The life?
Gritty urban realism with a heavy dose of decay is getting a bit old.
Rizzlad
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 1:13 PMare we forgetting the new tech5 engine though people? there hasnt been much hype about that bit from what i’ve seen the unreal engine will be blown out of the water.
bobsquiggles
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 7:27 PMIt’s been purposely kept under wraps until RAGE comes out. I’m looking forward to it because of it’s Massive Texture streaming capabilities
APK31
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 1:26 PMThe UNREAL 3 engine is the best engine out there IMO. Sure, you have things like CRYENGINE that caters for a more comprehensive world with more complex physics…that the world has a little more depth to it (for example the water you can jump into and swim in, instead of it looking ‘pretty’ on the surface). But the UNREAL 3 engine still looks better to me. It also runs a whole lot better than CRYENGINE. The ONLY thing I hate about UNREAL 3 engine is the (sometimes) poor texture streaming.
Sughly
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 1:41 PMHello! Fancy seeing you here :D
APK31
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 4:02 PMLong time no see on the Kotaku website :D
Jason Oliver
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 2:37 PMI have a question about this are any of the other main engines (CryEngine3, Anvil, RAGE, Frostbite, Avalanche etc) actually used by any companies other than their in-house devs?
It seems to me the only engine in widespread commercial use is Unreal 3, counting off the top of my head I can think of at least 10 games that I own that use Unreal and countless more that I’ve played.
APK31
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 4:09 PMTo tell you the truth, Jason, I’m not really sure about the other engines being used by other developers (I think it’s mostly a case of the companies who design them are the ones who primarily use it). You’re right in saying that the UT3 engine is probably the most widespread engine out there, and that’s probably because it runs so well with relatively little taxation on current generation consoles.
Jamie Schafer Phillips
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 7:30 PMThe only other mainstream engine that I can think of is HL engine, but to be honest I feel that the engine is incredibly outdated even in its latest instalments.
bobsquiggles
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 7:25 PMCryengine 3 (apparently so), but all the other engines you mentioned are inhouse. I have to admit I wish Lucasarts would licence out their Ronin engine (The Force Unleashed 1 and 2), that way other companies could develop on it, make fantastic games with the technology they spent SOOO MUCH money trying to develop.
bobsquiggles
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 7:19 PMI really hope they have fixed their texture streaming issues, it’s great being able to play the game, but it really lets it down when everything looks like a blob of colours
mcilrain
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 2:04 PMYou certainly won’t be seeing anything like this on current-gen consoles.
Seb
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 2:32 PMAgreed. Instead of upping the effects, wish they would just fix the crappy frame rate of the PS3 version of the unreal engine.
James Mac
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 4:02 PMHave they resolved the texture pop with this version of the engine?
Jason Padgett
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 6:10 PMCurrent gen PC’s could run that shit right now without missing a beat…..shame that we are limited by current console tech right now.
OpenEye00
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 7:02 PMI’m probably one of the small percentage of people that cannot stand the sight of unreal engine.. It’s for lazy devs who care more about highest profit in minimal time, than real passion for video games (plus it’s so dated in my eyes it’s not funny) but I can in no way deny how f***ing amazing this looks..if its real that is.. I mean it is just a tech demo after all, I wonder if they can actually implement this in-game any time soon..
Tezz
Friday, March 4, 2011 at 9:37 AMDo you also complain about games taking along time to be released. The Unreal Engine is not for lazy game developers, its for developers who want a great engine, which allows them to jump right in and work on their passion; making video games.
building an engine from scratch is not always feasible, especially when their is a more than capable game engine to run your game.
Nikko Cereza
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 7:51 PMOkay well for those who don’t know. CryEngine is shit. That is all.
Jonathan O'Brien
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 8:20 PMWow. Tech-demo or not, this stuff is amazing. The trouble is, to get graphics of this quality, the development turnaround time would be higher. But it’s so beautiful…
pzkrj
Thursday, March 3, 2011 at 9:53 PMGameplay > graphics…
RJ
Sunday, March 6, 2011 at 11:04 AMJust when you think games cant look any better…
Data-Cain
Monday, March 7, 2011 at 6:30 PMyes of course! any game made with the unreal engine will only be able to use the same environment and colours as the tech demo.
Go back to playing you Wii. >.<