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[Blizzard]

This UE3 update is not designed for a specific hardware target or a specific game, it is designed to better serve a wide range of game developers' individual, differing needs in utilizing video game hardware, and to aid in the transition between this console generation and the next.

That's one of the reasons I really like Epic's work, even though trying to deal with their engine is really frustrating for me sometimes. Everyone gets the technology when they improve it, apparently (unless they make some exception and actually come out with "UE4"), and hobbyists/indie developers even get it for free, as long as they can figure out how to do things with it.

Side note, I ran into the annoyingness that is Scaleform and how Flash is basically required for menus etc. going forwards in the UDK. As far as I know you can just use basic Flash without the Scaleform stuff, but it still took a bunch of hoops to jump through to find free (also opensource which was nice) software that could do the menus. Previously the UDK/UE3 included support for a menu system in the engine/editor itself.

Overall, as long as they keep improving and perhaps add some performance improvements, I'm glad they're in the business no matter how much some may dislike the engine.

 

[Nirolak]

Looks hot. I guess developers can take advantage of that stuff by now?

Yeah, these upgrades actually went out to all UE3 licensees a little while ago.

 

[Izayoi]

Looks great for something that's targeted at all levels of DirectX.

Good for Epic.

 

[EviLore]

Yeah, these upgrades actually went out to all UE3 licensees a little while ago.

But do these middleware engine upgrades have the SUBTLE BEAUTY of FROSTBITE 2.0?! I'm NOT IMPRESSED by the BRUTE FORCE nature of ADDING A DX11 RENDERER to a MIDDLEWARE ENGINE.

 

[StuBurns]

Yeah, these upgrades actually went out to all UE3 licensees a little while ago.

I wonder if BioShock will make use of them. From the gameplay trailer it looks like they're taking the PC version very seriously.

It's the biggest upcoming UE3 game I can think of.

 

[Izayoi]

I wonder if BioShock will make use of them. From the gameplay trailer it looks like they're taking the PC version very seriously.

It's the biggest upcoming UE3 game I can think of.

Oh boy, I can't believe that I completely forgot about Infinite.

That already looked amazing. I can't wait to see what it looks like months later.

We should see more of it by E3, right?

 

[Blizzard]

I wonder if BioShock will make use of them. From the gameplay trailer it looks like they're taking the PC version very seriously.

It's the biggest upcoming UE3 game I can think of.

Mass Effect 3 is the other one that comes to mind.

 

[iavi]

I wonder if BioShock will make use of them. From the gameplay trailer it looks like they're taking the PC version very seriously.

It's the biggest upcoming UE3 game I can think of.

I remember reading somewhere that Irrational are using it, but they're rewriting just about everything that makes UE3 UE3. Something about the engines current state not allowing for the most dynamic of set-pieces/environments.

EDIT: a little backing: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-bioshock-infinite-tech-details

 

[poisonelf]

Am I right in assuming that Epic has a huge advantage over competition regarding licensing engines?

I mean the competition such as crytek or id are just presenting their first iterations for this gen, while Epic was ready from the start, even if not with the most beautiful results by what I read (I was thoroughly impressed with Gears of War at the time, but that's just me), and had the time and money to perfect it and move into the next generation already. Guess they'll be first again next time around.

 

[StuBurns]

Mass Effect 3 is the other one that comes to mind.

Indeed, I wonder if it's too close to the bone to be adding that stuff at this point for them though.

Any smarter gaffers know when in production you need to prep for this stuff?

Am I right in assuming that Epic has a huge advantage over competition regarding licensing engines?

I mean the competition such as crytek or id are just presenting their first iterations for this gen, while Epic was ready from the start, even if not with the most beautiful results by what I read (I was thoroughly impressed with Gears of War at the time, but that's just me), and had the time and money to perfect it and move into the next generation already. Guess they'll be first again next time around.

id are out of the running, CryEngine is basically their own competition.

 

[Nirolak]

I wonder if BioShock will make use of them. From the gameplay trailer it looks like they're taking the PC version very seriously.

It's the biggest upcoming UE3 game I can think of.

There's also likely Medal of Honor 2's campaign, the last one being quite gorgeous on PC.

Indeed, I wonder if it's too close to the bone to be adding that stuff at this point for them though.

Any smarter gaffers know when in production you need to prep for this stuff?

It can be pretty late actually. It's not uncommon to even be able to add this stuff post launch.

 

[Blizzard]

There's also likely Medal of Honor 2's campaign, the last one being quite gorgeous on PC.

Good gravy, I didn't know that was UE3, thanks.

*edit* Some brief searching shows that UE3 was for singleplayer only, and was "quite heavily modified". Ah well, still looks nice. And apparently Frostbite was for multiplayer.

 

[Vic]

It was already possible to use the bokeh depth of field with the current Unreal SDK? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR2-8xmf09I

 

[Stallion Free]

I remember reading somewhere that Irrational are using it, but they're rewriting just about everything that makes UE3 UE3. Something about the engines current state not allowing for the most dynamic of set-pieces/environments.

Except it still looks distinctly Unreal Engine in all the videos released so they didn't take that out.

 

[Nirolak]

Good gravy, I didn't know that was UE3, thanks.

*edit* Some brief searching shows that UE3 was for singleplayer only, and was "quite heavily modified". Ah well, still looks nice. And apparently Frostbite was for multiplayer.

Yeah. Their job postings seem to imply that they're doing the same thing again for the sequel, but with Frostbite 2 for the multiplayer.

Depending on what still exists of the original though, they can still work these effects back in.

 

[Blizzard]

It was already possible to use the bokeh depth of field with the current Unreal SDK? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR2-8xmf09I

Unless I'm greatly mistaken, that was a guy doing the effect on his own, maybe with post-processing material effects. I would guess that future updates would have built-in support for bokeh as a post-processing option.

 

[Stallion Free]

One of the last huge additions to the UE3 tech, the baked in lighting, took quite a while to show up in a non-Epic game though did it not?

 

[Nirolak]

One of the last huge additions to the UE3 tech, the baked in lighting, took quite a while to show up in a non-Epic game though did it not?

That's true, but there were two reasons for that.

1.) A lot of people were using their own light prebakers at that point.

2.) Light prebaking takes a ton of time, as you have to manually set up all the lights so the level looks good when prebaked, and any changes you make means you need to prebake again, which can take hours upon hours to do.

DirectX 11 effects on the other hand have not been implemented by engine licensees and take no real extra effort to implement outside of tessellation.

 

[GraveRobberX]

Quick ?, can BioShock Infinite or any UE3 game in process of being made just port over all these new goodies, or is it for upcoming games that are in pre-production that will take advantage of it

 

[Nirolak]

Quick ?, can BioShock Infinite or any UE3 game in process of being made just port over all these new goodies, or is it for upcoming games that are in pre-production that will take advantage of it

Depending on what they changed, they might not even have to port these features.

It's certainly possible to get all this running very, very late in development, as it's even not that hard to change a game post launch to include a new DirectX version.

The question is if they actually care to do so, and now that Epic has provided the base, it's vastly less work.

 

[Blizzard]

One of the last huge additions to the UE3 tech, the baked in lighting, took quite a while to show up in a non-Epic game though did it not?

It looks like Lightmass was announced almost two years ago to the day, and Bulletstorm just released recently, so it looks like you're correct. I am not aware of earlier commercial games that used Lightmass and I haven't found a list so far...

 

[shinobi602]

Holy shit those pictures looks phenomenal....

 

[Stallion Free]

That's true, but there were two reasons for that.

1.) A lot of people were using their own light prebakers at that point.

2.) Light prebaking takes a ton of time, as you have to manually set up all the lights so the level looks good when prebaked, and any changes you make means you need to prebake again, which can take hours upon hours to do.

DirectX 11 effects on the other hand have not been implemented by engine licensees and take no real extra effort to implement outside of tessellation.

And sadly tesselation is what I want the most. It would be lovely in Mass Effect 3.

It looks like Lightmass was announced almost two years ago to the day, and Bulletstorm just released recently, so it looks like you're correct. I am not aware of earlier commercial games that used Lightmass and I haven't found a list so far...

Enslaved was the first I believe.

 

[StuBurns]

It looks like Lightmass was announced almost two years ago to the day, and Bulletstorm just released recently, so it looks like you're correct. I am not aware of earlier commercial games that used Lightmass and I haven't found a list so far...

Bulletstorm is Epic.

 

[Nirolak]

And sadly tesselation is what I want the most. It would be lovely in Mass Effect 3.

Well, BioWare did put in the effort to add tessellation to Dragon Age 2, so they certainly could add it to Mass Effect 3.

It takes a bit more effort than the rest of the features, but waaaaaaaaay less than pre-baked lighting.

 

[Blizzard]

Bulletstorm is Epic.

That makes it kind of scary considering that presumably it is the best that they were able to do with their own engine, but some people really did not seem to like the graphical result.

Is your point that it took a long time for even Epic to make a game using it, though?

Enslaved was the first I believe.

I think you are correct, thank you (fall 2010). But no thank you for reminding me of TheOctagon's debug shots of that game.

 

[Stallion Free]

Well, BioWare did put in the effort to add tessellation to Dragon Age 2, so they certainly could add it to Mass Effect 3.

It takes a bit more effort than the rest of the features, but waaaaaaaaay less than pre-baked lighting.

I completely forgot about Dragon Age 2. That had a comparable dev time to ME3 so I'm gonna be pretty disappointed now if we get no DX11 at all.

 

[n0b]

But do these middleware engine upgrades have the SUBTLE BEAUTY of FROSTBITE 2.0?! I'M NOT IMPRESSED BY THE BRUTE FORCE NATURE OF ADDING A DX11 RENDERER TO A MIDDLEWARE ENGINE.

I was going to make a serious response but I seem to have accidentally engaged troll mode. Whoops, I'm sorry. I'M REALLY IMPRESSED THAT YOU ACHIEVED THESE GRAPHICS UNDER IDEAL CIRCUMSTANCES, I BET YOUR ENGINE HOLDERS WILL BE REALLY GLAD THAT THEY CAN UTILIZE THESE FEATURES BY PATCHING THEM IN AND LOL MASS EFFECT CHARACTERS WILL SPROUT FULL HEADS OF HAIR ON DX11 WHILE THEY ARE BALD EVERYWHERE ELSE BECAUSE DEVELOPERS DON'T HAVE TO TARGET THEIR ASSETS TOWARD A PARTICULAR HARDWARE SPEC AND WHOOPS DON'T MISS THE TESSELATED PORES IN THE NOSE HAIR PICKING MINIGAME.

I'll remember in the future that gratitude to middleware providers for keeping their engines up to date is not enough and instead I should be incredibly impressed by their tech demos of visuals that are years off instead of just admiring the visuals for being pretty and being cautiously curious to see what, if any effect these updates will actually have on an actual game.

 

[StuBurns]

That makes it kind of scary considering that presumably it is the best that they were able to do with their own engine, but some people really did not seem to like the graphical result.

Is your point that it took a long time for even Epic to make a game using it, though?

My point was just that it's an Epic game and your post was in response to asking about non-Epic games. But I didn't see Stallion's post about Enslaved.

I think Bulletstorm looks pretty poor on consoles. I don't know why though, Gears 2 still looks great.

EDIT: Wow, the post above. Meltdown.

 

[Tomat]

I like the look of this more than the look of Battlefield 3.

 

[Blizzard]

My point was just that it's an Epic game and your post was in response to asking about non-Epic games. But I didn't see Stallion's post about Enslaved.

I think Bulletstorm looks pretty poor on consoles. I don't know why though, Gears 2 still looks great.

EDIT: Wow, the post above. Meltdown.

Ah, whoops. I messed up the non-Epic part. At any rate, it took a long time for anyone to use it either way. It does look pretty nice. I'm tempted to see if I could recreate a small Mirror's Edge indoor scene for comparison with Beast.

 

[Stallion Free]

Bulletstorm is actually made by People Can Fly who is owned by Epic. They haven't been working with UE3 since the start of this generation. The game looks pretty amazing on PC most of the time though.

Then again UE3 usually manages to come together pretty well on PC thanks to the image quality (1080p/AA).

 

[Nirolak]

Now that I think about it, the big budget, announced, upcoming PC games using UE3 are:

-Batman: Arkham City
-Mass Effect 3
-BioShock Infinite
-Aliens: Colonial Marines
-Blade & Soul
-And likely Medal of Honor 2's singleplayer campaign.

 

[reptilescorpio]

Holy shitballs those pics are insane. Would love to see the trailer on my TV. Nice to see the generation improving, hopefully plenty of games currently in development (ME3, Bioshock) can put it into use.

 

[iavi]

My point was just that it's an Epic game and your post was in response to asking about non-Epic games. But I didn't see Stallion's post about Enslaved.

I think Bulletstorm looks pretty poor on consoles. I don't know why though, Gears 2 still looks great.

EDIT: Wow, the post above. Meltdown.

As much as PCF are Epic, I don't think they manged the engine as well as the Gears team will. Technically, Gears3 looks all the more phenomenal.

 

[charsace]

I love the look of their sub surface scattering.

 

[Grampa Simpson]

It's nice to want things.

 

[Kitschkraft]

Looks great. My biggest concern for next gen is the innovation in things like animation and attention to detail (No matter how much of this stuff is added to Mass Effect 3 for instance, I will never be able to get over every character of a species having the exact same body). But I won't complain with the eye candy either.

What will really blow me away is when they show something out in the sun, like in a desert or a forest or something. Man...imagine if EA changed their minds and made Mirrors Edge 2 with this engine.

 

[modulaire]

finally realistic DOF-effects with bokeh - I'm so tired of the crappy and totally wrong DOF implemented in most games today (inFamous 2!!)

 

[Erasus]

That looks amazing! I think Unreal Engine 3 is still an awesome engine.

 

[Nirolak]

Looks great. My biggest concern for next gen is the innovation in things like animation and attention to detail (No matter how much of this stuff is added to Mass Effect 3 for instance, I will never be able to get over every character of a species having the exact same body). But I won't complain with the eye candy either.

What will really blow me away is when they show something out in the sun, like in a desert or a forest or something. Man...imagine if EA changed their minds and made Mirrors Edge 2 with this engine.

Apparently the animation is really good according to the VG247 write-up.

The thing with every character of a species having the same body though has to do with saving RAM, since they can just clone all the animations and geometry when they have multiple members of that species present.

The better you make each model, the less variation you can have, so it's kind of a hard trade-off. A great example of this dilemma is Anarchy Reigns, which has a ton of model variation, but the general visual quality is fairly low due to it.

 

[-tetsuo-]

Lookin' good lookin' great.

 

[duk]

looks freakin awesome, if next gen was like that i'd hit it

 

[Pooya]

That's a new artistic direction for character designs I think, Epic always used UT-like characters for tech demos from what I remember.

Those screens look a bit better than Deus Ex HR CG trailer.

 

[itxaka]

Looks great. For all the shit that UE3 gets I am always impressed with all the things they add to it all the time.

And yes, that billboard scene gave me a boner thinking about blade runner.

And wow at that nvidia hair demo, holy shit it looked real. But looking at it closer gave them a bit over 60fps with a gtx580 lol, we are not getting that in a long long time

 

[Noisepurge]

"Also crucial: Rein noted that the demo was running on three Nvidia GTX 580s. For the non-technophiles among you, that’s off-the-shelf, readily available (albeit ultra high-end) hardware. You may very well own a similar configuration right now"

Haha, give me a break. Three 500$ graphics cards in a computer is something that people may very well own right now?

And they tell us PC gaming is affordable! ;D

 

[DieH@rd]

Now that I think about it, the big budget, announced, upcoming PC games using UE3 are:

-Batman: Arkham City
-Mass Effect 3
-BioShock Infinite
-Aliens: Colonial Marines
-Blade & Soul
-And likely Medal of Honor 2's singleplayer campaign.

DEVIL MAY CRY

 

[DieH@rd]

"Also crucial: Rein noted that the demo was running on three Nvidia GTX 580s. For the non-technophiles among you, that’s off-the-shelf, readily available (albeit ultra high-end) hardware. You may very well own a similar configuration right now"

Haha, give me a break. Three 500$ graphics cards in a computer is something that people may very well own right now?

And they tell us PC gaming is affordable! ;D

In two years equivalent of one gtx580 will cost 150-200$. At that time one 500$ card will get insane processing power.

 

[Pooya]

DEVIL MAY CRY

PC games.

 

[chase]

My god...i-it's beautiful.