• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Unreal Engine 4 to be revealed this year.

P

pottuvoi

Banned
Mr Swine said:
Well Epic didn't support the 3DS so I have a hard time seeing Epic support the Wii U even when it does more than the PS3 and Xbox 360 ever could :/
Click to expand...
I'm sure that they will support WiiU with UE3, if the machine is advanced enough they will add support for UE4 as well.
 
A

antonz

Member
Mr Swine said:
Well Epic didn't support the 3DS so I have a hard time seeing Epic support the Wii U even when it does more than the PS3 and Xbox 360 ever could :/
Click to expand...

The 3DS ended up going from a full featured GPU to a more limited GPU somewhere along the line. Its likely Nvidias bullshitting on Tegra finally broke down when they couldn't offer the performance in power budget they had been promising.

The more fixed featured GPU is the issue with UE
 
S

Sho_Nuff82

Member
Medalion said:
EPIC won't support Wii-U because why break tradition?
Click to expand...
If Crytek supports Wii U, I really doubt Epic will want them to have a monopoly on middleware on any platform. I imagine UE4 will scale to most modern video cards, which should include whatever Nintendo has under the hood.
 
S

-SD-

Banned
Coolwhip said:
I don't get how people can get so giddy about a graphics engine. Unless it has fun shading.
Click to expand...
You don't get how people can get excited about different things than you do? I find your lack of general life wisdom... completely normal.
 
K

Krabardaf

Member
I wonder if it will look any different than the Samaritan Demo. UE3 has evolved so much since release, they could have renamed it already.

Since they didn't, I expect UE4 to be a profound change rather than a "simple" evolution of UE3. My bet is on fully dynamic lighting with radiosity (like CE3).
 
S

squidyj

Member
Coolwhip said:
I don't get how people can get so giddy about a graphics engine. Unless it has fun shading.
Click to expand...

It's not your thing, clearly (lolgraphicsengine). Some of us though are really interested in tech stuff and how it works, in fact, some of us even work on that sort of stuff themselves.
 
K

Krilekk

Banned
The M.O.B said:
There is a new system coming out this year so............:p
Click to expand...

Have you seen Epics idea of UE 3.99999 (Samaritian demo)? There is no way that Wii U would be capable of that (I think they had 3 high end Nvidia GPUs in SLI mode). Wii U will get the UE3 with some enhancements (remember that bird tech demo at the Wii U presentation? That was UE3). No, this will be PS4 or next Xbox and it sure sounds like they will be running the next gen E3 presentation.
 
G

Gunmonkey36

Member
Hopefully the UE4 lighting features no longer includes the horror that is known as bloom.

Thing's just do not look like that in real life. I dislike when everything looks like its been covered in vaseline.
 
K

Krabardaf

Member
The fact that Samaritan ran on 3 GTX580 doesn't mean it's impossible to achieve something similar on next gen. I fully expect the next gen to display this kind of graphics within two or three years from release.
If we can't expect that, next gen will be senseless to most.

As for Wii U, we don't know the spec so it's hard to tell for now...but I wouldn't be surprised if the platform could perform most of the techniques seen in Samaritan. If its GPU is recent there is no reason it couldn't. That doesn't mean we'll see something as stunning as the demo though.
 
S

squidyj

Member
Gunmonkey36 said:
Hopefully the UE4 lighting features no longer includes the horror that is known as bloom.

Thing's just do not look like that in real life. I dislike when everything looks like its been covered in vaseline.
Click to expand...

Bloom is here to stay. Of course a lot of the worst offenders for bloom are the ones that aren't actually doing HDR and are just bloomin' bright spots. Good tone mapping and a good exposure help with making sure you don't have a shitty looking space with a bunch of overbright areas. Likewise I think the actual bloom can be improved in next gen to not be so glaring and out of touch.
 
B

bgassassin

Member
squidyj said:
Bloom is here to stay. Of course a lot of the worst offenders for bloom are the ones that aren't actually doing HDR and are just bloomin' bright spots. Good tone mapping and a good exposure help with making sure you don't have a shitty looking space with a bunch of overbright areas. Likewise I think the actual bloom can be improved in next gen to not be so glaring and out of touch.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Some games went overboard with bloom to the point that it was kind of a turn off to the look of the game.

*also a bump due to the other thread being misleading and turning into a Wii U discussion*
 
P

Pachimari

Member
But why do everyone assume, UE4 = PS4 or Xbox 720?

Couldn't it be showcased on a Wii U, also to send a message of how flexible the engine actually is? That it can operate on everything from a high-end PC to a Wii U. I think that, right now, is more plausible than another next-gen system announcement.
 
A

aeolist

Banned
Anastacio said:
But why do everyone assume, UE4 = PS4 or Xbox 360?

Couldn't it be showcased on a Wii U, also to send a message of how flexible the engine actually is? That it can operate on everything from a high-end PC to a Wii U. I think that, right now, is more plausible than another next-gen system announcement.
Click to expand...

Because people are still holding onto the delusion that the next Sony and Microsoft consoles will somehow have high-end PC GPUs in them despite all the indications that next gen consoles will be designed around efficiency and a tight power envelope.
 
D

Deleted member 81567

Unconfirmed Member
Doesn't this make sense if next gen consoles are also being announced?
 
N

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
So, here's a selection of what Epic has said about the future of Unreal Engine and Unreal Engine 4 in general.

Presumably delivering their tech as soon as possible means it's possible to ship a game on it as opposed to first being able to use it, since obviously it exists right now.

Develop said:
Wednesday, 26th October 2011 at 3:30 pm

Develop: Is there anything you want to do differently for Unreal Engine 4?

Mike Capps: Well, the thing is, what we’re doing with Unreal Engine now is a lot different to what we were doing about seven years ago when we first started using the tech. There was no Unreal Development Kit even four years ago, and I think it’s been real successful in getting people used to our technology.

Should we have done that from day one with UE3? Yeah, maybe.

I’m not sure if we’re going to do it straight away with Unreal Engine 4, but if you look at what we do now with UE3 – y’know, push a button and your game is built for mobiles – we could have done that before and we didn’t spend much time on it. How much that will figure into Unreal Engine 4 is up to us.

I would like to have a vertical solution – for our tech to be useful for mobile projects and triple-A projects. In the past few years I think we’ve learned a lot about our technology and how it works for indie studios. How our tech works for iPhone games, for high-end triple-A studios and for a couple of guys who make a cool UDK game over the summer.

We’re going to apply all these lessons we’ve learned with Unreal Engine 4, and I think you’re going to see a lot of difference with UE3 within the first six months from launch.

And the other thing I’ll call out; I want Unreal Engine 4 to be ready far earlier than UE3 was; not a year after the consoles are released. I think a year from a console’s launch is perfectly fine for releasing a game, but not for releasing new tech. We need to be there day one or very early. That’s my primary focus.

For us as a game-maker, we aren’t keen on shipping games day one because there’s not much of an install-base, or at least not one as big as it’s going to be. But with engines, that’s a different story. We want to deliver our tech as early as possible even though our first big marquee game might not be on there for twelve or even twenty-four months from a console’s launch.

Develop: What do you want from the next generation of systems?

Mike Capps: I think it’s very important that a gamer sees an Xbox Next or PlayStation Next and can clearly see the tech is not possible on current consoles. Otherwise they won’t be a success. And that’s a very tall order. I mean, PS3 is still very bad-ass – Heavy Rain looks great. To blow that away we need the hardware to do it.

I think another thing that’s changed is the way people are willing to spend their money. Consoles need to adapt to this. Game revenue has moved to the service model and the microtransactions model. Consoles need to start being comfortable with that. They need to be able to do something where small virtual items can be sold and bought for 20¢ without a long certification process and a price approval process.

Right now we’re not even allowed to change the prices of virtual content. We’re not even allowed to set the prices. I just don’t think this protectionist approach is going to be successful in a world where the price of virtual items changes on a day-today basis.

Double-A games will never come back unless we get rid of this notion of a game being $60 or not released. The console manufacturers need to let this happen. The best way of driving developers to PC is telling them they have no freedom in what prices they can set for virtual items. It would be great to have the level of freedom that, say, Steam gives you.
Click to expand...
Source: http://www.develop-online.net/features/1462/Epic-Games-next-gen-manifesto

Kotaku said:
Dec 7, 2011 12:20 PM

Sweeney shifted to more of a planning and research role for the newer engines, as he has in recent years for the forthcoming Unreal Engine 4. He's already backed off on that one, keeping a high-level eye on it while about 40 people at Epic build it as, Epic and Sweeney hope, the graphical standard of gaming's next generation.
Click to expand...
Source: http://kotaku.com/5865951/the-quiet-tinkerer-who-makes-games-beautiful-finally-gets-his-due

IGN said:
September 26, 2011

IGN: How much time do you spend working on Unreal Engine 4?

Tim Sweeney: I spend about 60 percent of my time every day doing research work that's aimed at our next generation engine and the next generation of consoles. This is technology that won't see the light of day until probably around 2014, but focusing on that horizon enables me to do some really cool things that just aren't practical today, but soon will be. Some of our most productive work in the industry was on the first Unreal engine back in 1996, when I wrote a software vendor with a bunch of new features that hadn't been seen before. I feel like that's what I'm doing now on Unreal Engine 4 in exploring areas of the technology nobody else is really yet contemplating because they're still a few years away from practicality. But I see a huge amount of potential there and so it's very, very fun work.

IGN: What's the biggest challenge you foresee in shifting from the current engine to Unreal Engine 4?

Tim Sweeney: The big challenge that's going to be coming up in the next decade is scaling up to tons of CPU cores. The way we write software today in Unreal Engine 3 is to have one processor handle all the graphics and it's only a single CPU core with another processor that's dedicated to all gameplay that's running on another CPU core. The next challenge is going to be scaling up to tons of CPU cores. But once you have 20 cores, you can't easily say this one is going to be for animation and this one is going to be for details on the face of the character, because all these parameters change dynamically as different things come on screen and load as you shift from scene to scene. So the big challenge will be redesigning our engine and our workload so that we scale more of these different computer tasks between CPU cores seamlessly in real-time and dynamically so that you're always getting the maximum computing power out with the engine, regardless of what sort of work you're doing.
Click to expand...
Source: http://games.ign.com/articles/119/1196638p1.html

1UP said:
1UP: I know you probably get this a lot, but your talks are usually about adding upgrades to the feature set for UE3 -- that you're improving and adding onto UE3 again and again. At what point do you draw the line and say you're done with UE3; it's time to finally use Unreal Engine 4?

Mark Rein: What we've done in the past is that we draw the line with the console generations. I don't want to pigeon-hole Unreal Engine as a console-only technology -- it's also mobile, handheld, and PC technology. But so far, that's how it works. When these new ultra-mass market home entertainment devices come out and set a new bar, that's when you'll see us clicking over to "Unreal Engine 4" -- which will support those features and who knows what else.
Click to expand...
Source: http://www.1up.com/features/interview-epic-next-gen-plan?pager.offset=2
 
U

USIGSJ

Member
One more interview from January

http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/20/epics-3d-graphics-wizard-tim-sweeney-says-business-and-technology-are-intricately-linked-interview/

GB: So now you’re sort of setting the direction for the engine creators to pursue?

TS: Yeah. Gosh wave about 45 people who are contributing to our engine programming and so it’s a big team. If I were to come in and dabble in that, I would create more trouble than good with the project of that magnitude. Once you get to that size, it takes some serious management. We have a director of engineering that oversees all the programming and certainly he’s responsible for a particular project and features of the engine.

GB: So what, how do you do something like figure out where graphics can go next? If you look at something in a scene, and study how good it looks, how do you figure out how it can look better?

TS: We think really long-term at Epic. Once you get a piece of hardware like the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3, it’s up to the individual engineers to figure out how they can push it. But the really important thing that we do long term is work with the hardware manufacturers like AMD, Nvidia and Intel and really talk deeply about their long-term roadmap. Not just what’s coming next year but what’s coming out in two years, five years from now. Where is the industry going to max out? We give each other a lot of feedback and can have considerable impact on their direction.

GB: Yeah I remember that back to the original Xbox where co-creator Seamus Blackley was consulting with you pretty regularly.

TS: One of the cool things about being a leading engine developer is that the hardware guys want to talk to us about long-term plans so we are in sync. The development of the Xbox was a great thing and we have talked with Intel about their long-term CPU and graphics plans. The same with Nvidia. They are really valuable relationships. We run our engine a lot like a hardware company runs its products. At any moment, we are shipping product and we are also programming things that aren’t going to ship to consumers for three to five years. It’s a multi-dimensional effort. It really puts us out ahead of other developers who are working from project to project. That is one of the things that makes Epic unique in the game industry.
Click to expand...

GB: How do you feel the age of the consoles right now, since it has been so many years since a new console launched. If you want to set yourself apart on graphics, I would guess that you don’t really like it when the generation of the console stretches out six or seven years. Would rather see the generations come sooner?

TS: The longevity of this console generation has been a mixed blessing. On the game side, it’s been really great for our business. We have been able to ship three Gears of War games on the same generation of hardware, each one with dramatic improvements over the last and a two to three-year development cycle. So it’s been a very good thing for a game business today. With each new title, there is a bigger and bigger Xbox 360 installed base of users, so the games can sell more. On the other hand, it gets harder to generate the same excitement from the same hardware. That is when the new hardware is justified. But then you reset the installed base to zero and it’s a lot harder to sell a lot of games again. So you should only replace the hardware when you can make a dramatic leap in quality, not just 2X or 3X. It has to be huge and fundamentally new.
Click to expand...
 
D

DarkChild

Banned
Good news! I suppose even better news is the fact that one of lead engineers on CE2&CE3 is now at Epic Games for 2 years already.
 
B

bgassassin

Member
Nirolak said:
Tim Sweeney: The big challenge that's going to be coming up in the next decade is scaling up to tons of CPU cores. The way we write software today in Unreal Engine 3 is to have one processor handle all the graphics and it's only a single CPU core with another processor that's dedicated to all gameplay that's running on another CPU core. The next challenge is going to be scaling up to tons of CPU cores. But once you have 20 cores, you can't easily say this one is going to be for animation and this one is going to be for details on the face of the character, because all these parameters change dynamically as different things come on screen and load as you shift from scene to scene. So the big challenge will be redesigning our engine and our workload so that we scale more of these different computer tasks between CPU cores seamlessly in real-time and dynamically so that you're always getting the maximum computing power out with the engine, regardless of what sort of work you're doing.
Click to expand...

Looking back this kind of makes me think about the ARM cores in the MSNerd rumor.
 
C

chickdigger802

Banned
Just imagine... unreal 4 allows luscious hair.

The age of space marine crew cut hair will be over!

Next gen games not be about graphics, AI, audio, but about mother fucking hair.
 
L

Luigiv

Member
i-Lo said:
Here's a question:

What is going to be done about the ever annoying aspect of "clipping"?
Click to expand...

It'll eventually go away as collision detection, physics and procedural animation becomes relatively cheaper to compute.

Depends entirely on the game, though. Some games actually have clipping on purpose so it's not going to disappear completely.
 
Death Dealer

Death Dealer

Member
sp3000 said:
I want an Unreal 3 more than a UE4.
Click to expand...

After I read the OP and before I saw your post, I was thinking: I hope the UE4 engine reveal shows off some vegetation rendering abilities. Stepping onto the surface of Napali in the first game was so memorable. The Samaritan demo's environment didn't do much for me. But the characters looked great.

Unreal 3 on UE4 would be nice. Unreal 2 was pretty good but I think I'd prefer one or two epic detailed alien worlds to explore rather than planet hopping with short levels like U2. Basically I hated the spaceship sections of the game.
 
P

pieatorium

Member
chickdigger802 said:
Just imagine... unreal 4 allows luscious hair.

The age of space marine crew cut hair will be over!

Next gen games not be about graphics, AI, audio, but about mother fucking hair.
Click to expand...

Alice Madness Returns had some of the best hair this gen and was UE 3. Maybe UE4 will allow people to realise that artists, animators etc exist and have control over alot of the stuff that UE 3 gets a bad rap for.
 
L

les papillons sexuels

Banned
I really want to know where technology is going. Whether developers are going to continue focusing on higher plygon, better shader, and post processing? whether they're going to start developing engines that are more specialized in doing one thing and one thing well like lighting or world building? or whether they plan to start making more complete feeling games by introducing better simulation of hair, fluids, and enviromental effects like wind, rain, etc.
 
S

-SD-

Banned
i-Lo said:
What is going to be done about the ever annoying aspect of "clipping"?
Click to expand...
Crytek tried to get rid of it with CryEngine 2 and Crysis.

Here's a quote from Edge #161 (2006):

Edge said:
It encorporates a dizzying selection of convincingly next-generation concepts. Ten-pass single shading (from bump, normal and specular maps to the less familiar dirt maps), procedural character generation (the models feature such novel traits as semi-transparent cartilage, self shadowing eyes and haemoglobin maps), pixel-specifc soft particle acuracy, the complete eradication of clipping, ubiquitous self-shadowing encompassing translucent and backlit objects.
Click to expand...
 
C

cilonen

Member
They must be close to finialising just how many million shades of brown will be able to be rendered on screen simultaneously.
 
Ü

Übermatik

Member
Krilekk said:
Have you seen Epics idea of UE 3.99999 (Samaritian demo)? There is no way that Wii U would be capable of that (I think they had 3 high end Nvidia GPUs in SLI mode). Wii U will get the UE3 with some enhancements (remember that bird tech demo at the Wii U presentation? That was UE3). No, this will be PS4 or next Xbox and it sure sounds like they will be running the next gen E3 presentation.
Click to expand...

Haha, erm, no, it wasn't. And you won't get the Samaritan demo running on any console next gen in that high a quality.
 
M

Maxrunner

Member
funkystudent said:
so I guess this means a new console announcement this year and a Unreal 4 tech demo to show the hardware off.

Epic havent exactly been hiding the fact they have been working with Microsoft and probably sony on there next gen consoles for a while now.





Well..... unless this is just a iPad thing.
Click to expand...

And Nintendo too
 
M

Mik2121

Member
Ubermatik said:
Haha, erm, no, it wasn't. And you won't get the Samaritan demo running on any console next gen in that high a quality.
Click to expand...

Hahaha... Perhaps not that exact same high quality (full HD with great AA), but otherwise we will have stuff that looks even better than the Samaritan demo. That's for sure.
 
H

herzogzwei1989

Banned
Opus Angelorum said:
If it's based upon next generation architecture, the results could be amazing.
Click to expand...

Which next-gen architecture? There are several in development. You mean Southern Islands and Kepler which are now near current, or NEXT gen future architectures like Maxwell and Canary Islands? which are 2013-2014 hardware.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Cyberpunk 2077 devs say developing sequel on Unreal Engine 5 is a "challenge"
Game Dev
32
2K
Dazraell replied
Cyberpunk 2077 director says studio's switch from REDengine to Unreal Engine 5 'isn't starting from scratch'
Game Dev
45
4K
RJMacready73 replied
GDC 2024 | Conf Schedules for Unreal & other Game Tech
2
765
CamHostage replied
Unreal Engine 5.2 expands toolset for creating next-gen 3D graphics and content
News Game Dev
11
1K
Mr.Phoenix replied
“State of Unreal” Showcase Coming Next Month, Epic and 3rd Parties to Show New Projects
News Event Game Dev 2
52
4K
UnNamed replied
Top Bottom