Next-gen graphics: CryEngine 3

[Frederica Bernkastel]

rather than having rushed ones now and be limited to what we currently have on PCs.

CryEngine 3 isn't new though and there are already a few games using it...like Crysis 2. These guys are just pushing the engine.
And if anything, consoles are holding back PC graphics. Even if that does sound rather snobbish it's true.
It's rare that high production PC only games are made these days. Easier to just lazily port console games.

You throw enough time and effort in something and you can make it shine.

This, a thousand times so. I've seen Unreal Tournament 2004 mods (Unreal Engine 2) that are prettier than even some commercial Unreal Engine 3 games!

even then, you need to be careful with it. The Wii U is seemingly available to developers now (or at least an alpha/beta version). Which means it comes with technology that exists and that is affordable in the current age.
In about two years time the actual next gen will be a lot more powerful than the wii U.. thats just a wild guess though.
You'd think people learned their lesson with the DS, the 3DS, the Wii, etc.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Learn their lesson? You going have to elaborate.
It a big wild guess because you expecting a big jump in 2 years time in still be affordable and worth it.
Besides that, 2 years with a (actual) next gen console, the wii u, you don't think it would
establish and stabilize enough to withstand against 2 year technology?

The wii u is dealing with 5-6 years after tech which devs are saying is like %50 more power.
If they do come out in one or two years, how much % do you think it would go up from the wii u?
Would it even matter? They probably just use that % to make things look "prettier",
more players or something that wouldn't really prolong game development between consoles.

(Just going to stop here)

yeah... it's a wild guess, because we really don’t know when Sony/Microsoft will launch their next home console. They certainly, can't do it right now (or in the next years). They still need to support Move and Kinect and sell it.
If they release a new console... it will be like Sega did with the Sega CD - 32X – Saturn – Dreamcast cycle... releasing a new console and stop supporting the recently released new one, and we all know how bad that turned out!

So my guess is that both Sony and Microsoft are going to support move and kinect for the next couple of years. But hey! I’m not Nostradamus! so nobody should give a shit about my opinion

Except they can move those (Move and Kinect) to the new console.

Check Moore's Law. This is very possible in 2 years.

Very lifelike graphics even at 480p (highest my comp can run) - imo they failed at the waterfall (a.k.a toilet scene) the water didn't meet the standards of what the lounge looked like. (could be my limited quality streaming tho )

Imo, what makes it so easy to spot a picture out of a game vs real life, is that there's so much bigger volume of detail in RL photos - and that's really really really hard to copy to a game engine taking in account the amount of time companies spent on making games these days.

Anyone remember that Ultra HD / Lifelike graphic model - name was atomic graphics/model or something to do with atoms. The idea was to built everything from the atomic level instead in sprites. I thought that was a pretty neat idea.


E* typo

They used repeated voxels numerous times. It was an elaborate publicity stunt to show off their voxel engine. The same voxels were stored in memory and shown at multiple locations, nothing to be impressed with really. However it is indeed the way forward, and there are real engines that are far more efficient that actually run on available hardware! Here is one such example (of the Atomage Engine, and here is an example of it in a game-like context).

 

[Arm73]

.......................


Look, it's not like I'm not impresses by the demo itself or the work of the programmers.
I respect very much those guys and kudos to them for being so passionate and professional about their jobs.

What I meant to say is that I'm not impressed by the future of video games in general, and the direction that it's been taken here.
The article it's called ( and I quote ) "Next-gen graphics: CryEngine 3, Sony, Microsoft, make it happen! ".
Therefore what I wrote is in response to the allusion that gamers want this kind of graphics in the next gen system, which is not necessarily the best or only way to go.

Am I the only one who's not impressed ?....................

Like seriously, it's a tech demo. It's not meant to do anything outside of show off how good the graphics can be, it's not even a game yet. You remember that tech demo that showed off Wii U graphics? Utter shit, no story or gameplay involved. The tech demo for Kojima's new Vita engine? Bullshit, no story or gameplay.

Seriously, criticizing a tech demo for being nothing more than a tech demo is just incredibly stupid. This is meant to show off one aspect of a game, in this case graphics. Adding "innovative" gameplay (or for that matter, any gameplay) comes later. Having good looking games is a nice feature.

I wrote what I wrote because of the tile of the topic, suggesting that we want/should get that kind of performance from a next gen system.
Nowhere in my previous posts I criticized anything, I have nothing against a brilliant demo.
Don't try to outsmart people by going OT and generalizing that good graphics are a nice feature, of course they are.

 

[KingVamp]

Very lifelike graphics even at 480p (highest my comp can run) - imo they failed at the waterfall (a.k.a toilet scene) the water didn't meet the standards of what the lounge looked like. (could be my limited quality streaming tho )

Imo, what makes it so easy to spot a picture out of a game vs real life, is that there's so much bigger volume of detail in RL photos - and that's really really really hard to copy to a game engine taking in account the amount of time companies spent on making games these days.

Anyone remember that Ultra HD / Lifelike graphic model - name was atomic graphics/model or something to do with atoms. The idea was to built everything from the atomic level instead in sprites. I thought that was a pretty neat idea.


E* typo

This is where we last heard of them and it is still quite skeptical.

Check Moore's Law. This is very possible in 2 years.

IIrc, this law also have loopholes, slow downs, obstacles,exceptions and limits just like other laws,
so you really can't just go by that.

Does it factor the certain economy?
Laws aren't absolute nor can hold against all outside forces.

(Scanned)
Even at one point it says that everything else dealing with the growing of technology may rise in price.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

Very lifelike graphics even at 480p (highest my comp can run) - imo they failed at the waterfall (a.k.a toilet scene) the water didn't meet the standards of what the lounge looked like. (could be my limited quality streaming tho )

Imo, what makes it so easy to spot a picture out of a game vs real life, is that there's so much bigger volume of detail in RL photos - and that's really really really hard to copy to a game engine taking in account the amount of time companies spent on making games these days.

Anyone remember that Ultra HD / Lifelike graphic model - name was atomic graphics/model or something to do with atoms. The idea was to built everything from the atomic level instead in sprites. I thought that was a pretty neat idea.


E* typo

[media]http://www.youtube.c...h?v=00gAbgBu8R4[/media]
[media]http://www.youtube.c...h?v=JVB1ayT6Fdc[/media]
This is where we last heard of them and it is still quite skeptical.

Check Moore's Law. This is very possible in 2 years.

IIrc, this law also have loopholes, slow downs, obstacles,exceptions and limits just like other laws,
so you really can't just go by that.

Does it factor the certain economy?
Laws aren't absolute nor can hold against all outside forces.

(Scanned)
Even at one point it says that everything else dealing with the growing of technology may rise in price.

Historical examples have shown that these factors are nothing to be concerned about. Also please see my addendum about Unlimited Detail, and how they're trying to sell a functionally useless voxel engine.
Unlimited Detail cannot process animations properly (they are rather tricky with voxels) and cannot store enough voxels in memory to generate or recreate a world properly. It's a publicity stunt. Atomontage however is another engine that /does/ work.

 

[rt141]

Nice graphics, guess this only means higher production costs and more time to produce a game, giving us of course, no gurantee it'll be good.

 

[Foxi4]

Now, now, now, let's clarify a few things.

1. There will not be a massive overhaul of hardware within the next 2 years. Why? Because we have reached the absolute limit of silicone technology. We can make our chipsets smaller, but it's a long process. We can add cores, but that increases power consumption and heat exhaustion. We can no longer use higher frequencies. Gradually processors will be more and more like today's GPU's - composed of minature, highly-specialized cores and SPU's, much like the PS3's multi-core system, but on a microscale on a single chip, which will improve performance, but not by "a whole lot" in the sense of "revolution". We're about 7-10 years away from the first widely-available processors with Graphene-based SPU's, since this particular material is no longer a rarity and can be produced in labs. In fact, since last year, a technology to produce it cheaply is widely available. THOSE chips allow frequencies as high as (theoretical) 1000Ghz, and current Graphene "CPU's" are clocked 100Ghz and up, HOWEVER they have troubles with operations on floats, so it's still a matter of "the future". Another option would be nano-tubes of carbon, but those are expensive to produce, fragile and generally "stuff of science fiction" as far as a desktop is concerned for at least the next 15-20 years.

2. There WILL be graphic overhauls. Engines are enhanced every year, the Polycount rises steadily and it will rise, however significantly slower now than, say, 5 years ago, due to the previously mentioned reason.

3. As far as Voxels are concerned - yes, it's possible to use them in video games. Yes, it's possible to use them as atom-like molecules. Yes, it is possible to animate groups of them rather than individual voxels, contrary to the common opinion, as long as they are dynamically attached to a standard skeleton made of Bones. In fact, I could even procure readily-available solutions for animating Voxel models efficiently, but I trust in your Google abilities. No, it's not cutting the model into pieces and making it look unnatural - I'm talking about full flex-like animation.

4. Notch's arguments are true as long as we assume that the ammount of Voxels is fixed and that they are affixed to certain positions and treated as "solid" points. What Euclideon does is dynamically producing more or less Voxels "around" a fixed "mesh-like" grid of a given model depending on how far it is from the viewer for the best viewing experience at the least CPU/GPU resource usage. Yes, it will be memory monging, but only when given models are treated as "individual" ones. If each type will be saved as an entity in RAM, rather than treating each stone individualy, you could save tons of space and clone said stone almost infinitely. Of course said "stone" would have to become an individual entity once it's damaged, animated etc. etc., but those are "marginal peculiarities". I'll support Carmack on this one - it is possible, but not "now", maybe not so much because of hardware limitations, although more RAM would always be welcome in the scenario of Voxel usage, but because all the big players in the market invested billions upon billions of dollars on enhancing the Polycount, thus pushing the GFX Chip and CPU industry forward. If all of a sudden we'll loose the need to have top-notch hardware, companies lose on their investment, Intel and AMD lose on their research into better, faster CPU's and AMD (again) and NVidia loose money on developing such innovative structures as CUDA cores or new types of Pixel Shaders, which would be rendered relatively useless since "mid-tier" hardware is "theoretically" capable of rendering "some blocks". This is definatelly not something either of those will vouch for.

"Unlimited Detail" sounds "fishy" - it's obviously limited by hardware, there's only so much you can stuff into an Array, even if it's dynamic, so let's not treat it as "Unlimited", rather as "Really Close to Unlimited". Not just that, let's remember that you cannot "texture" Voxel models - instead, each Voxel has its own colour values, so I do hope there's a smart way to transfer these RGB values onto the "external" Voxels or else this is pretty pointless.

 

[sweenish]

crysis 2 and current pc's say hi.

since crysis 2 runs on cryengine 3. as in, no need to wait for "console support."

 

[Foxi4]

crysis 2 and current pc's say hi.

since crysis 2 runs on cryengine 3. as in, no need to wait for "console support."

That's... not how it works. The DS is capable of running the Quake 2 engine, which doesn't necessarily mean it will run Soldiers of Fortune or Half-Life - both games run on a modified QII engine. There's a certain thing called "modifications" that you don't keep in mind.

CryEngine3 works perfectly fine, but once you cram it up with mods and buff up the textures to sizes that are unreasonable and not recommended, you end up with a game that requires a monster of a PC to run with an acceptable framerate.

 

[The Milkman]

Now, now, now, let's clarify a few things.

1. There will not be a massive overhaul of hardware within the next 2 years. Why? Because we have reached the absolute limit of silicone technology. We can make our chipsets smaller, but it's a long process. We can add cores, but that increases power consumption and heat exhaustion. We can no longer use higher frequencies. Gradually processors will be more and more like today's GPU's - composed of minature, highly-specialized cores and SPU's, much like the PS3's multi-core system, but on a microscale on a single chip, which will improve performance, but not by "a whole lot" in the sense of "revolution". We're about 7-10 years away from the first widely-available processors with Graphene-based SPU's, since this particular material is no longer a rarity and can be produced in labs. In fact, since last year, a technology to produce it cheaply is widely available. THOSE chips allow frequencies as high as (theoretical) 1000Ghz, and current Graphene "CPU's" are clocked 100Ghz and up, HOWEVER they have troubles with operations on floats, so it's still a matter of "the future". Another option would be nano-tubes of carbon, but those are expensive to produce, fragile and generally "stuff of science fiction" as far as a desktop is concerned for at least the next 15-20 years.

2. There WILL be graphic overhauls. Engines are enhanced every year, the Polycount rises steadily and it will rise, however significantly slower now than, say, 5 years ago, due to the previously mentioned reason.

3. As far as Voxels are concerned - yes, it's possible to use them in video games. Yes, it's possible to use them as atom-like molecules. Yes, it is possible to animate groups of them rather than individual voxels, contrary to the common opinion, as long as they are dynamically attached to a standard skeleton made of Bones. In fact, I could even procure readily-available solutions for animating Voxel models efficiently, but I trust in your Google abilities. No, it's not cutting the model into pieces and making it look unnatural - I'm talking about full flex-like animation.

4. Notch's arguments are true as long as we assume that the ammount of Voxels is fixed and that they are affixed to certain positions and treated as "solid" points. What Euclideon does is dynamically producing more or less Voxels "around" a fixed "mesh-like" grid of a given model depending on how far it is from the viewer for the best viewing experience at the least CPU/GPU resource usage. Yes, it will be memory monging, but only when given models are treated as "individual" ones. If each type will be saved as an entity in RAM, rather than treating each stone individualy, you could save tons of space and clone said stone almost infinitely. Of course said "stone" would have to become an individual entity once it's damaged, animated etc. etc., but those are "marginal peculiarities". I'll support Carmack on this one - it is possible, but not "now", maybe not so much because of hardware limitations, although more RAM would always be welcome in the scenario of Voxel usage, but because all the big players in the market invested billions upon billions of dollars on enhancing the Polycount, thus pushing the GFX Chip and CPU industry forward. If all of a sudden we'll loose the need to have top-notch hardware, companies lose on their investment, Intel and AMD lose on their research into better, faster CPU's and AMD (again) and NVidia loose money on developing such innovative structures as CUDA cores or new types of Pixel Shaders, which would be rendered relatively useless since "mid-tier" hardware is "theoretically" capable of rendering "some blocks". This is definatelly not something either of those will vouch for.

"Unlimited Detail" sounds "fishy" - it's obviously limited by hardware, there's only so much you can stuff into an Array, even if it's dynamic, so let's not treat it as "Unlimited", rather as "Really Close to Unlimited". Not just that, let's remember that you cannot "texture" Voxel models - instead, each Voxel has its own colour values, so I do hope there's a smart way to transfer these RGB values onto the "external" Voxels or else this is pretty pointless.

So the PS4 will cost over 599 US Dollars? D:

 

[Foxi4]

Y'see, with advancements in technology come lower prices of the previously-available ones. Not just that - the more "advanced" given production lines become the "cheaper" you can produce... so no, not really.

 

[Shabutie78]

yeah me too
I guess that people will need to get used to the fact that now Nintendo has a HD console.

it's just that by the time PS4 and xbox3 come out, the wii won't even be regarded as a "then-current gen console." (or what we'd call a next gen console in the now)
especially considering how much sooner the wii-u will be released, which gives people time to get used to it before they get blown away by the "real" next gen consoles.

 

[Canonbeat234]

Oh joy, this have so much shovelware potential.

Edit:
Oh wait, where my matters are. Since I'm not such a 'graphic' whore; the youtube video shows just how freaking realistic the gaming graphics can be which can be good or bad depending on the genre of gameplay. Remember the rumor of the PS3 being equivalent to a refrigerator as far as electrical output goes? With the next generation of graphics, who knows how much voltage it will take to run a heavy graphic induce console?

 

[fgghjjkll]

Not trying to cause anything, but I find it funny that Nintendo not in the title

yeah me too
I guess that people will need to get used to the fact that now Nintendo has a HD console.

even then, you need to be careful with it. The Wii U is seemingly available to developers now (or at least an alpha/beta version). Which means it comes with technology that exists and that is affordable in the current age.
In about two years time the actual next gen will be a lot more powerful than the wii U.. thats just a wild guess though.
You'd think people learned their lesson with the DS, the 3DS, the Wii, etc.

Except, they're trying to fix up what previous systems suffered. With the DS, there was still no decent central online system compared to the PSP, but the 3DS attempted to fix this with primitive online features and a universal friend code. Even then, it wasn't what we exactly wanted... For starters, our nintendo points are either transfered to the 3DS or the Wii, instead of implementing a central nintendo point bank. The Wii already has its online flaws like the NDS from the very beginning and it's kind of too late and too much effort to bring it up to a decent online system we all want.

They are trying their best, hell, they even tried asking EA to help them develop their online system.

EDIT: Furthermore, they're trying to appeal to the "graphics whores" and the "hardcore gamers" with their new systems.
Both the 3DS and in the future, the WiiU, have splendid graphics, but they also kept the same features that appeal to the "casual gamer" market with the touch screen and motion controls.
It's not like they're just throwing out a brand new DS with bigger screen + cpu, new control mechanisms = different ways to control your game (Up to the creativity of the developers though, which is quite lacking... recently...)

 

[Foxi4]

Except, they're trying to fix up what previous systems suffered. With the DS, there was still no decent central online system compared to the PSP, but the 3DS attempted to fix this with primitive online features and a universal friend code. Even then, it wasn't what we exactly wanted... For starters, our nintendo points are either transfered to the 3DS or the Wii, instead of implementing a central nintendo point bank. The Wii already has its online flaws like the NDS from the very beginning and it's kind of too late and too much effort to bring it up to a decent online system we all want.

Show me the central online system on the PSP. As far as the portable is concerned, there's maybe 20-40 Online Multiplayer games, Ad-hoc Party fixed that problem to some extent but it's just re-animating a dead horse. WFC on the DS eats PSN on the PSP ALIVE anytime, anyday, just with the sheer ammount of online games. I'll even dare to say that the PSP wouldn't even have meaningful Online gameplay if not XLink Kai that was developed early in its life cycle.

They asked EA to help with developing "WFC 2.0" because they showed extreme inability to create an infrastructure themselves. As Miyamoto once said, they're primarily a video game development studio - they have their sister companies that sit in the shadows to develop consoles "for their games".

 

[Zerox8610]

Honestly I liked the graphics from Crysis 1 more than any other game or demo, such as this one.

 

[sweenish]

crysis 2 and current pc's say hi.

since crysis 2 runs on cryengine 3. as in, no need to wait for "console support."

That's... not how it works. The DS is capable of running the Quake 2 engine, which doesn't necessarily mean it will run Soldiers of Fortune or Half-Life - both games run on a modified QII engine. There's a certain thing called "modifications" that you don't keep in mind.

CryEngine3 works perfectly fine, but once you cram it up with mods and buff up the textures to sizes that are unreasonable and not recommended, you end up with a game that requires a monster of a PC to run with an acceptable framerate.

i'm not sure what your point is.

i'm saying that there's no need to wait for next-gen consoles since current-gen pc's already do this. that demo isn't running on some supercomputer, just a beefy desktop. as in, why wait, we can do it now.

as to your second paragraph, rage on pc says hi. mega-textures ring a bell? it may be buggy at the moment, but it's not new tech. texture sizes also have far far less to do with your cpu than with your RAM.

 

[Foxi4]

crysis 2 and current pc's say hi.

since crysis 2 runs on cryengine 3. as in, no need to wait for "console support."

That's... not how it works. The DS is capable of running the Quake 2 engine, which doesn't necessarily mean it will run Soldiers of Fortune or Half-Life - both games run on a modified QII engine. There's a certain thing called "modifications" that you don't keep in mind.

CryEngine3 works perfectly fine, but once you cram it up with mods and buff up the textures to sizes that are unreasonable and not recommended, you end up with a game that requires a monster of a PC to run with an acceptable framerate.

i'm not sure what your point is.

i'm saying that there's no need to wait for next-gen consoles since current-gen pc's already do this. that demo isn't running on some supercomputer, just a beefy desktop. as in, why wait, we can do it now.

as to your second paragraph, rage on pc says hi. mega-textures ring a bell? it may be buggy at the moment, but it's not new tech. texture sizes also have far far less to do with your cpu than with your RAM.

I assure you, the textures used in this demo have nothing to do with the Megatexture system used in Rage, that's uno.
Dos, current-gen consoles are not nearly as powerful as current-gen high-end PC's. Console games are generally watered-down compared to playing on "Top settings" on a PC.
Tres, you don't know "How beefy" the desktop is. It could be unreasonably beefy. Beefy to the point where buying one would be pointless, as you'd be doing it just to play this one game.

 

[sweenish]

not sure why you keep bringing consoles into this. my whole point is that we DON'T need them to have these graphics. also, it's cryengine 3. pc's are running it today. this demo was originally going to be a simple (simple is straight from the source) crysis 2 mod. so, it's just running on a beefy desktop.

you're last point is also the worst one you've made yet. if someone bought an uber-gaming rig that ran this demo flawlessly, they'd be playing a lot more than just this on it. we're obviously talking around a $2k rig, and it will play anything you throw at it. and since you spent so much money on it, you'll probably do the bulk of your gaming on it from that point on. pointless to play one game? it's more like beefy to play all the games.

 

[Foxi4]

There's *nothing else on the market* that requires this much processing power other than CUDA benchmarks and such, your point is moot.

 

[sweenish]

i don't know what part of crysis 2 mod you're not getting. computers can run this, now. because computers can run crysis 2, now. the crysis HUD is right there. nothing else on the market? are you daft? an OC'd i7 2600k and a sli'd 580s or xfire'd 6950's can do it today, right now. i never said it was cheap, but that rig would set you back ~$2k.


crysis 2 post dX11 patch, ultra settings, HD. those environments are just as stunning as the inside of the titanic. and that's a beefy desktop. not a supercomputer.

this demo is impressive, from the perspective of the amount of detail put into the project. not the fact that this is "next gen." people can do this now, as evidenced by the crysis 2 video.

http://www.youtube.c...0&v=AXjsMRDPrls
iCEnchancer gta iv mod. also runs currently on computers. beefy ones, but it runs. again, it's the attention to detail, as this mod manages to make gta iv environments and vehicles almost photo-realistic, using gta iv's engine, which isn't nearly as powerful as cryengine 3.

so again, modern gaming pc's say HI.