Best graphics ENGINE discussion.

The Source Engine, followed by the Cryengine 2 then followed by Dice's Unreal Engine wonder!

clyde46

The source engine, needs a age update soon though.

[QUOTE="evilross"]

This thread is a huge fail without id tech 5.

ferret-gamer

id tech 5 engine is a finished build, and although there are no games on the market at the time running tech 5, the engine itself is in it final form.

tech 5 was created by Carmack with versitility in mind, and was built from the ground up as a developers engine, not a propritory or single use engine. It can produce environments, workloads, and fields on the level of Crytech 2, with better textures (due to Carmacks new meta texturing), more physics options, a complete dev friendly toolset, and built in platform famliarity, meaning much less time spent on porting versions of code to and from differnt platforms.

tech 5 is going to be the most standard engine used from prolly mid-late 2010 untill the forseeable future just because of its power, versitlity, ease of use, and cost effective applications. It can do it all, do it as good or better then anything out there, and do it cheaper. This is my line of work, I know what I;m talking about. This is id's first "dev friendly' engine. Its made for devs, as a tool to create, not nearly as restictive as id's other engines (which are some of the best in the industry, just a lot more focused and limited in application other then the original intent).

[QUOTE="Blue-Sky"]

[QUOTE="supersaiyen"]Stop talking out of your ass you obviously never played uncharted 2 fan boy.

lpjazzman220

The problem with UC2 fans is their inability to distinguish Art direction from graphics. They base their entire analysis on still image comparisons. The impressive aspects about UC2's engine aren't just what you see with your eyes. I think UC2 is the best looking console game out right now, but the limitations in the engine scale is apparent.

LMAO.......i agree with you completely on the uncharted thing...it is a beautiful game, but it does have its limits, but that doesnt mean its not fun and dont mean its not a good game......but the engine could have been better..........p.s., blue-sky, you stole my mouse ;)

Wow... Six people so far voted for Unreal 3... That just makes me sad. That engine sucks. It is used way too much and it doesn't even look too good. Only game that pulls it off IMO is Mass Effect (soon to be Mass Effect 2). But the over shinyness of makes sense in ME due to the sci-fi setting. But Unreal 3 just has so many texture issues. The clear winner is CryEngine 2. If you say otherwise... you are likely a console fanboy or just hate the PC...

Dunia

My favorite is NDGE2, but technically speaking the CryEngine wins every time.

isn't it just Game Engine, which allows for graphics and physics etc.?

anyhow, for sheer graphics, I put Cry, but I think Unreal proves to be more versatile across genres:

Action simulators- MechWarrior Reboot

TPS- GOW, Unreal Tourny, a mass of mods

Racing- a game out of Russia is using a Unreal for racing, I found that to be odd.

I know Cry is good for mod support too, strangely, a MechWarrior mod is being done on Cry where as the franchise is being extended with a game on Unreal, as in my picture.

[QUOTE="supersaiyen"]

[QUOTE="Blue-Sky"]

I'll tell you which one that's not and it's NDGE2

Unlike the other 2, NDGE cannot support a wide spectrum of genres. While UC2 looks fantastic, it has to remain a corridor shooter with linear gameplay and scripted events just to maintain it's fidelity. Running an RPG or even a large scale FPS would cripple it.

Blue-Sky

The problem with UC2 fans is their inability to distinguish Art direction from graphics. They base their entire analysis on still image comparisons. The impressive aspects about UC2's engine aren't just what you see with your eyes. I think UC2 is the best looking console game out right now, but the limitations in the engine scale is apparent.

Its no more linear then Gears of War or Resident Evil 5 or any other major impressive looking title in its genre.

@ferret-gamer

Specs for CryEngine 3 from http://www.crytek.com/technology/cryengine-3/specifications/

[QUOTE="SAGE_OF_FIRE"]Cryengine 3 or the id tech 5 engine. Blade8Aus

those arent out yet. do they count? otherwise id be picking cryengine 2 for physics, graphics and stability and unreal engine 3 for being developer friendly. depends on what you wanna do really. source is cool too but its a bit dated now.

In a technical viewpoint, CryEngine 2 easily.

id tech 5 engine is a finished build, and although there are no games on the market at the time running tech 5, the engine itself is in it final form.

tech 5 was created by Carmack with versitility in mind, and was built from the ground up as a developers engine, not a propritory or single use engine. It can produce environments, workloads, and fields on the level of Crytech 2, with better textures (due to Carmacks new meta texturing), more physics options, a complete dev friendly toolset, and built in platform famliarity, meaning much less time spent on porting versions of code to and from differnt platforms.

evilross

tech 5 is going to be the most standard engine used from prolly mid-late 2010 untill the forseeable future just because of its power, versitlity, ease of use, and cost effective applications. It can do it all, do it as good or better then anything out there, and do it cheaper. This is my line of work, I know what I;m talking about. This is id's first "dev friendly' engine. Its made for devs, as a tool to create, not nearly as restictive as id's other engines (which are some of the best in the industry, just a lot more focused and limited in application other then the original intent).
evilross

[QUOTE="Blue-Sky"]

[QUOTE="supersaiyen"]Stop talking out of your ass you obviously never played uncharted 2 fan boy.

TheSterls

The problem with UC2 fans is their inability to distinguish Art direction from graphics. They base their entire analysis on still image comparisons. The impressive aspects about UC2's engine aren't just what you see with your eyes. I think UC2 is the best looking console game out right now, but the limitations in the engine scale is apparent.

Its no more linear then Gears of War or Resident Evil 5 or any other major impressive looking title in its genre.

I've just got done playing with Gears and not only is it more linear, there is a lot less happening on screen. Not to mention RES has a screen full of AI "zombies".

Uncharted has at most 6 AI racial minorites on screen at once, with piss poor AI to boot. They should trade places with the RES5 "zombies"

I thought that Mirrors Edge used Frostbite engine ?

Cryengine 2 no discussion at all

I thought that Mirrors Edge used Frostbite engine ?

telefanatic

I'll tell you which one that's not and it's NDGE2

Unlike the other 2, NDGE cannot support a wide spectrum of genres. While UC2 looks fantastic, it has to remain a corridor shooter with linear gameplay and scripted events just to maintain it's fidelity. Running an RPG or even a large scale FPS would cripple it.

The choices given are crap. Source wins best graphics engine.

People are most likely going to disagree with me, but I'll say the MT Framework engine.

People focus far, far too much on which engine can pump the highest eye candy. MT Framework is highly optimized, highly scalable and fully cross platform ready. It's not going to produce the best graphics out there but it will give you a damn good bang for your buck, it will run on a broad range of hardware; and that in the end opens up your games to a bigger audience.

CryEngine 3 appears to have the best cross platform support and high end features going for it, but it hasn't proved itself yet. Frankly if the PC version ends up looking like this as a result of console involvement; there is going to be a **** storm in SW.

The choices given are crap. Source wins best graphics engine.

rzepak

Source Engine.

Although those other engines may be superior in graphics, the Source Engine wins for support. For itd time, Half Life 2 surpassed anything out at the time. With the continuous updates and the abundant amount of games supporting it, Source wins over all other Engines.

blizzvalve

Meh, the Source engine hasn't mattered in years (if it ever did), the only reason it projects even the illusion of longevity is that Valve is too lazy to develop a successor.

Meh, the Source engine hasn't mattered in years (if it ever did), the only reason it projects even the illusion of longevity is that Valve is too lazy to develop a successor.

skektek

I have to leave the house in a bit, so I don't really have the time to go into a lengthy debate.

However, surely you recognise that continuing to use Source engine has allowed Valve to keep their development costs down? Why should they produce a new engine when using the existing one has not hurt the appeal of their games? Developing a modern engine only results in them being forced to focus more on cross platform development to accommodate the costs.

Valve are primarily a PC company, their audience is on PC. But if their development costs blew up they would have no choice but to cater to a one size fits all model like other developers, hurting their main audiences experience.

Offset engine looks pretty awesome, so does that new ID tech 5 engine. For current games I would say CryENGINE, but I still think that the source engine is one of the best.

There seems to be something wrong with my eyes, I can't see the source engine option.

[QUOTE="skektek"]

Meh, the Source engine hasn't mattered in years (if it ever did), the only reason it projects even the illusion of longevity is that Valve is too lazy to develop a successor.

AnnoyedDragon

I have to leave the house in a bit, so I don't really have the time to go into a lengthy debate.

However, surely you recognise that continuing to use Source engine has allowed Valve to keep their development costs down? Why should they produce a new engine when using the existing one has not hurt the appeal of their games? Developing a modern engine only results in them being forced to focus more on cross platform development to accommodate the costs.

Valve are primarily a PC company, their audience is on PC. But if their development costs blew up they would have no choice but to cater to a one size fits all model like other developers, hurting their main audiences experience.

I'm a gamer not a stockholder, I don't care about Valve's costs or expenses. I am tired of Valve Apologists whining about what can't be done when companies like Crytek, ID, Epic, and others are out there creating great platform agnostic engines.

[QUOTE="AnnoyedDragon"]

[QUOTE="skektek"]

Meh, the Source engine hasn't mattered in years (if it ever did), the only reason it projects even the illusion of longevity is that Valve is too lazy to develop a successor.

skektek

I have to leave the house in a bit, so I don't really have the time to go into a lengthy debate.

However, surely you recognise that continuing to use Source engine has allowed Valve to keep their development costs down? Why should they produce a new engine when using the existing one has not hurt the appeal of their games? Developing a modern engine only results in them being forced to focus more on cross platform development to accommodate the costs.

Valve are primarily a PC company, their audience is on PC. But if their development costs blew up they would have no choice but to cater to a one size fits all model like other developers, hurting their main audiences experience.

I'm a gamer not a stockholder, I don't care about Valve's costs or expenses. I am tired of Valve Apologists whining about what can't be done when companies like Crytek, ID, Epic, and others are out there creating great platform agnostic engines.

Except any argument for Cryteks engine being the best is a bucket full of fail from the outset. Why? Its simple aside from Crytek itself almost nobody uses their engine. This makes it insignificant.

Well I'm fan of the Havok engine. Beautiful and not so demanding... Sokay for my system.

Well I'm fan of the Havok engine. Beautiful and not so demanding... Sokay for my system.

Crimsader

[QUOTE="skektek"]

[QUOTE="AnnoyedDragon"]

I have to leave the house in a bit, so I don't really have the time to go into a lengthy debate.

However, surely you recognise that continuing to use Source engine has allowed Valve to keep their development costs down? Why should they produce a new engine when using the existing one has not hurt the appeal of their games? Developing a modern engine only results in them being forced to focus more on cross platform development to accommodate the costs.

Valve are primarily a PC company, their audience is on PC. But if their development costs blew up they would have no choice but to cater to a one size fits all model like other developers, hurting their main audiences experience.

rzepak

I'm a gamer not a stockholder, I don't care about Valve's costs or expenses. I am tired of Valve Apologists whining about what can't be done when companies like Crytek, ID, Epic, and others are out there creating great platform agnostic engines.

Except any argument for Cryteks engine being the best is a bucket full of fail from the outset. Why? Its simple aside from Crytek itself almost nobody uses their engine. This makes it insignificant.

The same is true of the Source engine.

Crytek gets at least some cred for trying to make a modern marketable engine.

[QUOTE="rzepak"]

[QUOTE="skektek"]

I'm a gamer not a stockholder, I don't care about Valve's costs or expenses. I am tired of Valve Apologists whining about what can't be done when companies like Crytek, ID, Epic, and others are out there creating great platform agnostic engines.

skektek

Except any argument for Cryteks engine being the best is a bucket full of fail from the outset. Why? Its simple aside from Crytek itself almost nobody uses their engine. This makes it insignificant.

The same is true of the Source engine.

Crytek gets at least some cred for trying to make a modern marketable engine.

Trying is not succeeding. I will not argue against the fact that Source engine only served its creators. In this ascpect Crynegine and Source are similar but whereas Cryengine pretty much = Crysis, Source has been used in HL2, L4D, TF2, Portal, the episodes, CSS, DoDS.

My favourite engines throughout the ages:

- Original Doom

- BUILD engine (Duke Nukem 3D and friends)

- Quake Engine

- Quake 3 Engine

- Source

- CryEngine 2 is really sweet

I hate the latest Unreal engine, the one that's being used to pollute most games released this gen.

I'm a gamer not a stockholder, I don't care about Valve's costs or expenses. I am tired of Valve Apologists whining about what can't be done when companies like Crytek, ID, Epic, and others are out there creating great platform agnostic engines.

skektek

I am not a Valve apologist... I have consistently made this argument regarding the industry as a whole, anyone who recognises me in SW will know that. It's not a matter of what cannot be done as what's sustainable, this current rout is not sustainable.

These companies you have listed as doing well all have something in common, they abandoned their initial business model in the name of maintaining their income. Crytek went cross platform because even with over 1.5 million sales of Crysis they didn't feel they made enough to justify Crysis's $22 million development cost, despite their obvious spending spree the last few years. ID games has jumped onto the lowest common denominator train with their new engine and put an end to over a decade of pushing the technology bar, Epic games have become Microsoft's b**** and abandoned their years old multiplayer audience.

All of them, every single one of them, have had to alter the way they operate in response to ballooning development costs. 'Gamers' like yourself have complained about the lack of exclusive games utilizing their platform of choice; and then they cheer on for developers to make bigger and more expensive games, why do you think so many games went cross platform?

Yet here you are, criticising one of the few developers with enough sense to not hurt their audience with their business decisions. By keeping costs low they can continue to produce the games their audience wants, not one size fits all/lowest common denominator targeting games; and eventually having to chase after broader and more casual audiences to keep up with increasing costs.

You are a PS3 gamer, you of all people should recognise the damaging affects 'on gamers' if developers have to keep producing increasingly more expensive games. I tell you now, with complete certainty, that PS3 would be dead by now if Sony didn't go on a spending spree to fill the consoles exclusive line-up. There wouldn't have been a Killzone 2 or a Uncharted or a God Of War 3, just a collection of inferior cross platform titles, PS3's promised potential would have never been utilized.

What will Sony do next gen? When development costs balloon yet again and even more developers go cross platform, how will PS4 differentiate itself? They cannot keep supplementing their line-up forever, it's too expensive. That's why you see them grabbing every none gaming feature they can get their hands on like Facebook and film streaming in a quick effort to stand out, that is until the competition gets it and they are back where they started.

Have fun with motion sensor gimmicks, because increasingly it seems that is your future, anything to grab gamer attention outside the expensive big budget titles that is making it hard to earn a decent profit this generation. You criticise Valve's decisions when PS3 is quite literally on financial life support from Sony, you need to get your priorities straight.

Ill vote Naughtys engine for Uncharted 2 for a single reason.

Because i strongly beleive the BEST engine is the one that gives awesome results in graphics WITH just FEW RESOURCES over other "heavier" games.

What i mean is , that Uncharted runs extremely good on a 7+1 core CPU where it runs only on 3.

GPU chipset is a low end ( for todays PC standards aka 5870!! ) though with that engine it seems like it can rival 5770!! Though it cant , its the engine that is that good!

LOW RAM requirements!! I mean a system with 512MB ram runs a game with so much of details and action?!! Way to go for this light though extremely well done ENGINE from NAUGHTY!...

And no im not even a PS3 owner , im a PC gamer.

[QUOTE="skektek"]

I'm a gamer not a stockholder, I don't care about Valve's costs or expenses. I am tired of Valve Apologists whining about what can't be done when companies like Crytek, ID, Epic, and others are out there creating great platform agnostic engines.

AnnoyedDragon

I am not a Valve apologist... I have consistently made this argument regarding the industry as a whole, anyone who recognises me in SW will know that. It's not a matter of what cannot be done as what's sustainable, this current rout is not sustainable.

These companies you have listed as doing well all have something in common, they abandoned their initial business model in the name of maintaining their income. Crytek went cross platform because even with over 1.5 million sales of Crysis they didn't feel they made enough to justify Crysis's $22 million development cost, despite their obvious spending spree the last few years. ID games has jumped onto the lowest common denominator train with their new engine and put an end to over a decade of pushing the technology bar, Epic games have become Microsoft's b**** and abandoned their years old multiplayer audience.

All of them, every single one of them, have had to alter the way they operate in response to ballooning development costs. 'Gamers' like yourself have complained about the lack of exclusive games utilizing their platform of choice; and then they cheer on for developers to make bigger and more expensive games, why do you think so many games went cross platform?

Yet here you are, criticising one of the few developers with enough sense to not hurt their audience with their business decisions. By keeping costs low they can continue to produce the games their audience wants, not one size fits all/lowest common denominator targeting games; and eventually having to chase after broader and more casual audiences to keep up with increasing costs.

You are a PS3 gamer, you of all people should recognise the damaging affects 'on gamers' if developers have to keep producing increasingly more expensive games. I tell you now, with complete certainty, that PS3 would be dead by now if Sony didn't go on a spending spree to fill the consoles exclusive line-up. There wouldn't have been a Killzone 2 or a Uncharted or a God Of War 3, just a collection of inferior cross platform titles, PS3's promised potential would have never been utilized.

What will Sony do next gen? When development costs balloon yet again and even more developers go cross platform, how will PS4 differentiate itself? They cannot keep supplementing their line-up forever, it's too expensive. That's why you see them grabbing every none gaming feature they can get their hands on like Facebook and film streaming in a quick effort to stand out, that is until the competition gets it and they are back where they started.

Have fun with motion sensor gimmicks, because increasingly it seems that is your future, anything to grab gamer attention outside the expensive big budget titles that is making it hard to earn a decent profit this generation. You criticise Valve's decisions when PS3 is quite literally on financial life support from Sony, you need to get your priorities straight.

Good post. Another 'side' effects of Valve's cotinued use of the source engine is that the low cost and huge amount of experience with the engine is that it becomes a lot more viable to take chance and try something new. If Valve had to shoulder the huge additional cost of developing a new engine AND then learning to use the new engine effectivly I doubt they'd have take chance like Portal, one of the most innovative and unique games in the last couple of years.TF2's art style, which did a great job of actually offering high quality multiplayer FPS action without the usual dirt gray and brown muscle men that have become so typical with Epic and Infinity Ward.

Also, the source engine has actually been used for a fair number of non-valve games. Certainly not as many as unreal 3 but still.. Vampire the Masquarade was the sacond game to use the engine (after HL2) also Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, The Ship, Zeno Clash, SiN and two of the postal games all used source.

Source Engine.

Although those other engines may be superior in graphics, the Source Engine wins for support. For itd time, Half Life 2 surpassed anything out at the time. With the continuous updates and the abundant amount of games supporting it, Source wins over all other Engines.

blizzvalve

[QUOTE="blizzvalve"]

Source Engine.

Although those other engines may be superior in graphics, the Source Engine wins for support. For itd time, Half Life 2 surpassed anything out at the time. With the continuous updates and the abundant amount of games supporting it, Source wins over all other Engines.

edwise18

Where's the Rage Engine, Carmack will probably come through with one of the best in the industry no doubt. themyth01

Well there hasn't been a single release of a Tech 5 engine game, so no one can really judge it on performance and quality.

Personally I think Rage could use a healthy dose of polygons.

[QUOTE="edwise18"]

[QUOTE="blizzvalve"]

Source Engine.

Although those other engines may be superior in graphics, the Source Engine wins for support. For itd time, Half Life 2 surpassed anything out at the time. With the continuous updates and the abundant amount of games supporting it, Source wins over all other Engines.

Mazoch

[QUOTE="Blade8Aus"]

[QUOTE="SAGE_OF_FIRE"]Cryengine 3 or the id tech 5 engine. ronvalencia

those arent out yet. do they count? otherwise id be picking cryengine 2 for physics, graphics and stability and unreal engine 3 for being developer friendly. depends on what you wanna do really. source is cool too but its a bit dated now.

well both are available to developers obviously but do you know how efficient and moddable it is? even though im sure theyll be pretty sweet.