There was such a tech for UE2 but I hed my doubts such a thing will ever be released for UE3. Also, this seems to be suitable for games as well, so it is much better. Means all total conversions for UT3 are now possible to play more or less for free (if they make no use of content from UT3).
UE3 is pretty powerful as I've understood it (Tech videos for UE3.5 in Gears 2 for example.) but it's scaled back a bit, similar to how Cry-Engine 2 could be made to look quite a bit better as seen with certain mods or user configs although it's not exactly a good comparison.
But the thing is, it has been held so much back, apparently, that I was losing hope! With the latest version (UDK), it looks like what UT3 looked in promo pics.
This is awesome news for an awesome engine!
I keep telling people that the engine (3.x) is hampered by poor developers and marketing (ie. popular to port direct from consoles to PC), none of which has anything to do with the real features of the engine. Besides, graphics is only one part of an engine.
Some interesting presentations can be found here (both new and old material).
Well, to be fail, what they showed in GDC09, the so called new features, were shown ages ago when they first demonstrated the engine. I'm starting to believe, they held back on some of the tech features to keep having their engine relevant even after a few years in the market.
Well, to be fail, what they showed in GDC09, the so called new features, were shown ages ago when they first demonstrated the engine. I'm starting to believe, they held back on some of the tech features to keep having their engine relevant even after a few years in the market.
I think it's much more likely they had to cut back on features. It happens in every tech project with a limited budget and workers, something has to give or in this case, be delayed.
Clearly, 3.5 was planned all along as a minor addition of some features - while the next major iterration is planned sometimes after 2012.
No no, they showed everything working. You don't cut features that are already working well (watch some of the videos they showed in 05) As I understand it from the video, these features work on consoles as well, so nothing magically changed in hardware requirements. A lot of people were disappointed with how UT3 looks, and now I think I see why - they figured they'd wait a few years, then "introduce" a few more features and make their engine relevant once more.
They call it Lightmass now, but really, the new shadowing, lighting and HDR (inc. tonemapping), the reflection (not the right word) of colored translucent surfaces from back lights, etc. I remember one demo in particular, which showed everything, the one with a Locust model (not known back then what it was) walking from area to area, showing each feature.
It's a long watch, but make sure to watch it entirely. There were more videos, but they are very old and hard to find.
Holy shit.... man, that was video was awesome!! Even more amazing considering that the engine powering that stuff is 5 years old (and then some?) As I said; I've always preferred UE over Tech.
This is awesome news for an awesome engine!
I keep telling people that the engine (3.x) is hampered by poor developers and marketing (ie. popular to port direct from consoles to PC), none of which has anything to do with the real features of the engine. Besides, graphics is only one part of an engine.
Some interesting presentations can be found here (both new and old material).
I think Borderlands is proof of what this engine can really do. It's completely out of the ordinary and looks and runs amazingly.
Mirrors Edge also did pretty well along with that early Robot game (First UE3 title.) and Bioshock, quite heavy on bloom and sorta brown environments in many other titles though.
(Low res and bad LOD scaling as well in some games but you can't render a entire area for performance reasons anyway, or what to say, Batman was quite sharp though and also showed some nice GPU accelerated physics on the level that only the UT3 bonus levels had before.)
I also loved Infernal, back when that came out. It was the 2nd UE3 game, if memory serves, and I was always so surprised that IT used Unreal Engine 3 even before UT3 had come out. Awesome game too.
It's a long watch, but make sure to watch it entirely. There were more videos, but they are very old and hard to find.
Thinking back, I think it's amazing what they showcased and had working so early. But the features (I heard Normal Mapping, Soft Shadowing, Area Lighting Simulation, Virtual Displacement Mapping, Material-to-light functions, Physics, Dynamic Shadowing (duh), Pixel Shader 2/3, Various Material Shaders, Bloom and HDR, and Light Emission) showcased in this video is not the same as is now in 3.5.
Actually, now that I think about it, with the tech showcased for 3.5 back a year ago (linky), they did show some new stuff in the GDC 09 video as I posted above.
Included in 3.5 @ 08:
- Ambient Occlusion Post Processing Filter
- High Density Crowds (100+ on screen at one time)
- Dynamic Fluid Surfaces
- "Matinee" Improvements
- Ageia Physx(c) Soft Body Simulations
- Destructible Environments
New in 09:
- New Unreal Content Browser
- Unreal MCP
- New Global Illumination System: Unreal Lightmass, that includes:
- Advanced Global Illumination
- Realistic shadow penumbrae
- Bounced light with color bleeding
- Translucent surfaces affect light hue
- Emissive materials illuminate the scene
Holding back, or adding features as fast as they can? Taking hardware cyclus into effect, I think the answer goes without saying. No, Leo?
SpykeZ wrote:
I think Borderlands is proof of what this engine can really do. It's completely out of the ordinary and looks and runs amazingly.
I haven't read up about Borderlands yet except seeing some videos/screenshots, but damn, there's no limit to what UE3 can do when it lands in the right developer!
There was some minor work that had to be done on the engine and I believe they said epic helped them out with it to get the gfx to turn out how they wanted.
It's a very mindless game, but they did 1 thing right, they made it mindless and FUN, much like serious sam/pain killer, it never gets old.
and then they let you build up a character with skills and shit. It's just pure fun
I also loved Infernal, back when that came out. It was the 2nd UE3 game, if memory serves, and I was always so surprised that IT used Unreal Engine 3 even before UT3 had come out. Awesome game too.
There was such a tech for UE2 but I hed my doubts such a thing will ever be released for UE3. Also, this seems to be suitable for games as well, so it is much better. Means all total conversions for UT3 are now possible to play more or less for free (if they make no use of content from UT3).
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