Has the 360's limit been reached? Or is the Unreal Engine to blame?

Bioshock, Mass Effect, Gears of War.

They have a few things in common. One of which is they all use the Unreal 3 engine. Another is they all suffer from texture loading, and occasional slow-down.

Mass Effect's graphics are top-notch, but as we've seen in reviews, it has technical problems. It loads textures at the beginning of levels. The game has to load areas from the disk, Oblivion style, and occasional slow-down in fights.

Bioshock has texture loading when entering new areas, and loading games, and sometimes at random places.

Gears of War endured the same texture loading. The game can suffer from slow down, I can't remember the game ever bogging down to much, but I can remember there being hints of slowdown sparsely through the game

The texture loading in these games only occurs after loading a new game, or entering a brand new level/area(ME) in my expierence. It may differ but that's how I've seen it. The slow down is kinda strange, especially in ME. I can be in just a room, make a turn to the left and slow down a bit, and then enter a huge battle and expierence none. And of coures, the complete opposite does happen.

With future games on the same engine coming out like Too Human (I believe is still unreal eng.) will they expierence the same issues? Perhaps not using theHDD theway the PS3 does is the culprit. Maybe it's just developer lazyness. Even an EPIC made game suffered these same problems?

So is the360reaching it's graphical limit? Orare the "major, game detracting" issues of......texture loading....just a sign of developer lazyess/mis-understanding/rushing product while using the Unreal engine?

Nope.KillaHalo2o9

good answer

maybe Silicon Knights were on to something when they were not impressed with Unreal Engine

but who knows

No, with games like Alan Wake showing up, it is all up to the developers to push te console.

Your blaming the console and not the engine :|

maybe Silicon Knights were on to something when they were not impressed with Unreal Engine

but who knows

Medjai

no, its just Dennis Dyack sucks and Too Human is a joke so he had to blame it on UE3 to save his butt...i mean alot of games use UE3 and look amazing but then comes Dennis saying "buh buh buh we got a stripped dawoooon UE3...EPIC are teh bad dats why ouva game sawkssss :cry: "

Edit: also people said Gears reached 360's limit...and now Mass Effect is out which looks better and is bigger as well....its all up to devs how they develop the game....even devs cant tell if they reaching the limit of a console....remember UBI Montreal said they were reahing original Xbox's limti when the released Splinter Cell? then same devs released Splinter Cell chaos Theory on same console which looked 10x better then previous SC's....damn that game eventoday impresses me graphically

Bioshock, Mass Effect, Gears of War.

They have a few things in common. One of which is they all use the Unreal 3 engine. Another is they all suffer from texture loading, and occasional slow-down.

Mass Effect's graphics are top-notch, but as we've seen in reviews, it has technical problems. It loads textures at the beginning of levels. The game has to load areas from the disk, Oblivion style, and occasional slow-down in fights.

Bioshock has texture loading when entering new areas, and loading games, and sometimes at random places.

Gears of War endured the same texture loading. The game can suffer from slow down, I can't remember the game ever bogging down to much, but I can remember there being hints of slowdown sparsely through the game

The texture loading in these games only occurs after loading a new game, or entering a brand new level/area(ME) in my expierence. It may differ but that's how I've seen it. The slow down is kinda strange, especially in ME. I can be in just a room, make a turn to the left and slow down a bit, and then enter a huge battle and expierence none. And of coures, the complete opposite does happen.

With future games on the same engine coming out like Too Human (I believe is still unreal eng.) will they expierence the same issues? Perhaps not using theHDD theway the PS3 does is the culprit. Maybe it's just developer lazyness. Even an EPIC made game suffered these same problems?

So is the360reaching it's graphical limit? Orare the "major, game detracting" issues of......texture loading....just a sign of developer lazyess/mis-understanding/rushing product while using the Unreal engine?

rocktimusprime

too early to say actually becuase of 2 things:-

1.DVD capacity cant be blamed for texture popping or whatever beacuse a huge game like ME took 6.7 gb I guess so that isnt it.

2.laziness also doesnt work here as ME was being worked for over 3 years for god sake.

But I still believe theres a long way to go before we see "limits" being reached.

[QUOTE="Medjai"]

maybe Silicon Knights were on to something when they were not impressed with Unreal Engine

but who knows

mingo123

no, its just Dennis Dyack sucks and Too Human is a joke so he had to blame it on UE3 to save his butt...i mean alot of games use UE3 and look amazing but then comes Dennis saying "buh buh buh we got a stripped dawoooon UE3...EPIC are teh bad dats why ouva game sawkssss :cry: "

An actual accomplished and acclaimed Game Developer > Some internet kid

Nope and I saw a article somewhere about Gears only using 33% of the 360s CPU power.KillaHalo2o9

So ... CPU power is pointless if the GPU is at its limit... which is more likely the case.

[QUOTE="Medjai"]

maybe Silicon Knights were on to something when they were not impressed with Unreal Engine

but who knows

mingo123

no, its just Dennis Dyack sucks and Too Human is a joke so he had to blame it on UE3 to save his butt...i mean alot of games use UE3 and look amazing but then comes Dennis saying "buh buh buh we got a stripped dawoooon UE3...EPIC are teh bad dats why ouva game sawkssss :cry: "

Nope and I saw a article somewhere about Gears only using 33% of the 360s CPU power.KillaHalo2o9

I also saw an article that said Halo 3 was garbage. But I can't seem to find it.

Case in point, unless you have the actual article, then don't bring up such loftyclaims as that.

No, with games like Alan Wake showing up, it is all up to the developers to push te console.

Your blaming the console and not the engine :|

Synthetic_NinJI

Alan wake has only been shown on a high end PC...

[QUOTE="mingo123"][QUOTE="Medjai"]

maybe Silicon Knights were on to something when they were not impressed with Unreal Engine

but who knows

Synthetic_NinJI

no, its just Dennis Dyack sucks and Too Human is a joke so he had to blame it on UE3 to save his butt...i mean alot of games use UE3 and look amazing but then comes Dennis saying "buh buh buh we got a stripped dawoooon UE3...EPIC are teh bad dats why ouva game sawkssss :cry: "

An actual accomplished and acclaimed Game Developer > Some internet kid

Dennis is a cry baby.....errr E3 showing "oops sorry the game was not meant to be shown, accidentally it somehow appeared at E3" thats what he saidafter crappy E3 Showing, then "wait a couple of months....believe us it looks incredible now" fans wait, new screen shots are released, still looks bad and Dennis says "omgz EPIC sucks, Too Human looks bad coz of bad UE3!!1!!!1" that guy is just finding reasons...whats the next excuse gonna be "omgz teh game still looks back coz one dev was a traitor working for Sonyyyyyyy11!!!! and ruined Too Human"

[QUOTE="mingo123"][QUOTE="Medjai"]

maybe Silicon Knights were on to something when they were not impressed with Unreal Engine

but who knows

Medjai

no, its just Dennis Dyack sucks and Too Human is a joke so he had to blame it on UE3 to save his butt...i mean alot of games use UE3 and look amazing but then comes Dennis saying "buh buh buh we got a stripped dawoooon UE3...EPIC are teh bad dats why ouva game sawkssss :cry: "

nothing is perfect but Dennis crys too much and blames on others.....Too Human isnt the only game using UE3

Mass Effect uses the Aurora Engine. : /RIZDRAVER

no it doesnt...your thinking of the withcer..

and your lucky it doesnt, the engine is not very well optimized at all.

[QUOTE="RIZDRAVER"]Mass Effect uses the Aurora Engine. : /cobrax75

no it doesnt...your thinking of the withcer..

and your lucky it doesnt, the engine is not very well optimized at all.

Nope and I saw a article somewhere about Gears only using 33% of the 360s CPU power.KillaHalo2o9

Why did it not use the extra 66% to help it's terrible framerate?

[QUOTE="Medjai"][QUOTE="mingo123"][QUOTE="Medjai"]

maybe Silicon Knights were on to something when they were not impressed with Unreal Engine

but who knows

mingo123

no, its just Dennis Dyack sucks and Too Human is a joke so he had to blame it on UE3 to save his butt...i mean alot of games use UE3 and look amazing but then comes Dennis saying "buh buh buh we got a stripped dawoooon UE3...EPIC are teh bad dats why ouva game sawkssss :cry: "

nothing is perfect but Dennis crys too much and blames on others.....Too Human isnt the only game using UE3

[QUOTE="mingo123"][QUOTE="Medjai"][QUOTE="mingo123"][QUOTE="Medjai"]

maybe Silicon Knights were on to something when they were not impressed with Unreal Engine

but who knows

Medjai

no, its just Dennis Dyack sucks and Too Human is a joke so he had to blame it on UE3 to save his butt...i mean alot of games use UE3 and look amazing but then comes Dennis saying "buh buh buh we got a stripped dawoooon UE3...EPIC are teh bad dats why ouva game sawkssss :cry: "

nothing is perfect but Dennis crys too much and blames on others.....Too Human isnt the only game using UE3

they are crying coz they suck, theres no reason Too Human should look bad when using UE3 even if its stripped down UE3, i mean other games using this bad UE3 version look great why cant this? heck even GOW on ps2 looks better then Too Human

UE3 really sucks... Those pop up textures where in GeOW, UT3 demo, BioShock and the game's suffer's from some extreme bullet lag.

framerate issues are in 2 games so far... mass effect and Area 51. aswell as the games looking extremely familiar... something to do with the now very dull texture and shader style the engine has.

I really hate the engine... at all GeOW was "WOW" because it was fresh... now its just meh.

I would really prefer if developers made their own engines.

the slowdown is the developers putting in more than the system can chew, that can happen with any engine and given that UE3 renders things that many other engines couldn't, it is excusable.

Pop-in, however, is simply a feature of the engine that developers decide to use. You see, they'd rather have textures pop-in than have another 15 seconds added to the loading times, so since the engine allows for it, they have pop-in. From a development standpoint, pop-in is remarkably easy to fix, but it comes at a huge cost to loading times.

What I can't stand about UE3 though is that, for whatever reason, it can't do faces.

[QUOTE="KillaHalo2o9"]Nope and I saw a article somewhere about Gears only using 33% of the 360s CPU power.Meu2k7

So ... CPU power is pointless if the GPU is at its limit... which is more likely the case.

Haha the consolites trying to act like they know what they are talking about. Thats just good fun right there.

UE3 really sucks... Those pop up textures where in GeOW, UT3 demo, BioShock and the game's suffer's from some extreme bullet lag.

framerate issues are in 2 games so far... mass effect and Area 51. aswell as the games looking extremely familiar... something to do with the now very dull texture and shader style the engine has.

I really hate the engine... at all GeOW was "WOW" because it was fresh... now its just meh.

I would really prefer if developers made their own engines.

sadikovic

I agree...you can always tell if a game runs on UE3 by the lighting...and generally they are good looking...though pretty far from the best...but the lighting is bassiclly the same in every game.

you can also tell when a game is running on the source engine pretty easily...also because of the lighting, which gives it a slightly unrealistic look sometimes...

I want more devs to use the cryengine, I would like to see what a game that doesnt have such huge open enviroments like crysis can look like.

i think you made an error you said it has occasional slow downs but it multiple reviews they said slowdowns are very common. Feel free to check out gametrailers review, all the gameplay clips except one i saw had a very low FPS.Sully28

in 12 hours of gameplay, i have expierenced only minor slow down, and usually at the strangest time.

The UT engine is rubbish.

Seeing as its main use is for Unreal Tornament. Its more the engines fault, however R6 vegas used UT3 and that was ok...Not...Some levels i had to reboot the game as it loaded no textures into the level. All i saw was geometry.

AC, Uncharted, Lair, Overlord. Are all great games as they are built of custom engines and dont seem to suffer many problems. Blue dragon has some major flaws at some points because it uses that stupid engine. I would of liked Mistwalker to make a solid rpg engine, and not use the UT engine that comes on all the 360 skus...

Thats the only reason why so many devs use it as MS purchased it for the sku's.

Mass Effect uses the Aurora Engine. : /RIZDRAVER

nope, uses unreal engine.

Which is a kick in the nads, they used to make their own. as i said, it saves money if the 360 skus already have an engine researched and built into them.

There are so many engines that I think are better than Unreal 3. Source engine for one. In 2004 HL2 broke new ground for its visuals that many boutiques still use as a benchmark for their system.

Look at Unreal Tournement 2k4 and compare it to Half-Life 2 or CSS and you'll see that they look alot better visually and the Source engine is alot better when it comes to maximizing hardware.
Pro_wrestler

and physics ;)

Nope and I saw a article somewhere about Gears only using 33% of the 360s CPU power.KillaHalo2o9

HA that's a good one

[QUOTE="mingo123"][QUOTE="Medjai"]

maybe Silicon Knights were on to something when they were not impressed with Unreal Engine

but who knows

Medjai

no, its just Dennis Dyack sucks and Too Human is a joke so he had to blame it on UE3 to save his butt...i mean alot of games use UE3 and look amazing but then comes Dennis saying "buh buh buh we got a stripped dawoooon UE3...EPIC are teh bad dats why ouva game sawkssss :cry: "

It's not but I have trouble listening to a developer who complains about it all the time instead of working to fix it.

Gears of War PC and Unrela Tournament 3 Demo all suffer the same texture loading issues. Its a engine issue with how it paints its texture layers, it has nothing to do with the 360.Cali3350

its because it reads loads of extra gemotry from high detail models on the disc or hdd and applys it as a map to flat surfaces. Which is why some textures look dead flat for a moment, then pop up looking amazing.

It's a mix of both developer lazyness and the fact that they still have yet to discover all the capabilities of the system.elbow2k

Wait, I thought lemmings were against claims of developer laziness when the cows used it? Now that people are pointing out issues with the 360, suddenly developers are lazy? This is especially odd considering everyone knows, and lemmings love to brag about how easy it is to develop for the 360.

So, the 360 is so easy to develop for, and yet if a game has graphical issues then it must be the developers fault for being lazy? Oh, and of course the system isn't even close to being maxed out! Just like the Xbox saw astounding graphical enhancements from launch to the end, so too will the Xbox. You know...because it is so easy to develop for developers can't really max out the console very quickly...

OH WAIT! That's BS. The Xbox saw only minor graphical improvements over it's lifespan because developers could easily tap into the power right from the start due to the EASIER HARDWARE.

WOw. It's amazing how quickly the lemmings are flip-flopping on this one. So let's do a quick recap. We know the PS3 is extremely difficult to develop for, but developers aren't lazy if they get frustrated and the PS3 will never improve graphically ever and anyone who talks about untapped power are to be mocked. BUT the much easier to develop for 360 has TONS of untapped power, will see massive graphical improvements over its life, and if developers have issues despite it being so easy it must be because of their laziness.

Bioshock, Mass Effect, Gears of War.

They have a few things in common. One of which is they all use the Unreal 3 engine. Another is they all suffer from texture loading, and occasional slow-down.

Mass Effect's graphics are top-notch, but as we've seen in reviews, it has technical problems. It loads textures at the beginning of levels. The game has to load areas from the disk, Oblivion style, and occasional slow-down in fights.

Bioshock has texture loading when entering new areas, and loading games, and sometimes at random places.

Gears of War endured the same texture loading. The game can suffer from slow down, I can't remember the game ever bogging down to much, but I can remember there being hints of slowdown sparsely through the game

The texture loading in these games only occurs after loading a new game, or entering a brand new level/area(ME) in my expierence. It may differ but that's how I've seen it. The slow down is kinda strange, especially in ME. I can be in just a room, make a turn to the left and slow down a bit, and then enter a huge battle and expierence none. And of coures, the complete opposite does happen.

With future games on the same engine coming out like Too Human (I believe is still unreal eng.) will they expierence the same issues? Perhaps not using theHDD theway the PS3 does is the culprit. Maybe it's just developer lazyness. Even an EPIC made game suffered these same problems?

So is the360reaching it's graphical limit? Orare the "major, game detracting" issues of......texture loading....just a sign of developer lazyess/mis-understanding/rushing product while using the Unreal engine?

rocktimusprime

Some of it is a part of Unreal Engine, take UT3, it's takes about 2-3 seconds for all the textures to load after the map is completely loaded, of course you probably aren't actually in the game yet so it isn't really a problem, and some of it is because of the x360, the PC version of GoW lacks the slowdowns of the x360 version if played on a decent pc.