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[shinobi602]

So I'm not an expert on the matter by any stretch of the imagination, but I started to think...what does GAF think is the most viable game engine for the next generation of video games? What does each bring to the table? I can only state the simple things, but what do you guys feel is the most robust? Most refined and efficient? Most accessible to developers?

This is pretty much all I can think of for now. If there are some I've missed, please do let me know

Let's go over the engines we know so far are targeted towards next gen:

Unreal Engine 4

Probably the most well known of game engines of course is UE. What do we know so far about this engine?

-Been in development since 2003
-Real time global illumination using "voxel cone tracing"
-"Kismet" debugging engine allows devs to directly see code while testing
-Voluminous smoke and particle effects

Unreal Engine 3?

Apparently, there have been some major upgrades done to the UE3 engine. Enough to almost completely differentiate it from current gen versions of the engine. Take a look at the "Samaritan" demo from Epic, or Star Wars 1313.

-Real time dynamic lighting
-Bokeh depth of field
-Reflections, lighting, shading eyegasms

CryEngine 3

We've already seen this engine in action beginning with Crysis 2, and now Crysis 3. Needless to say it looks absolutely stunning in C3.

-Subsurface scattering
-Real time dynamic illumination
-Real time volumetric cloud shadows, tesselation galore, real time area lighting
-Top secret fucking toad tech

Fox Engine

Not much is known about this engine, but supposedly we're "current gen" aspects of it in MGS: Ground Zeroes.

-Allows development of multiplatform titles in "significantly shorter development time"
-Real time dynamic lighting?
-Special attention given to lighting and reflections

Frostbite 2

Again we've already seen current gen iterations of this engine in games like BF3 and NFS, but we won't truly know the potential until next gen.

-Takes "full advantage of the DirectX 11 API and 64-bit processors"
-Detailed destruction using "Destruction 3.0"
-MLAA; real-time subsurface scattering
-"Quasi-realtime radiosity using Enlighten from Geomerics"

Luminous Engine

Square Enix blew the lids off their next-gen engine this past E3. Probably the best looking visuals I've ever seen.

-Intense focus on textures and details (like particles, hair, etc)
-Also focuses highly on animations, high quality models, and shading
-Sadly not much else is known

Glacier 2 Engine

IO Interactive's newest engine.

-Supports up to 1200 detailed NPCs on-screen
-Highly detailed textures
-Dynamic range lighting

AnvilNEXT engine

Ubisoft's idea of an engine ready for the next generation. We've seen current gen iterations of it in Assassin's Creed 3, and possibly next-gen samples of it in the upcoming Watch Dogs game.

-Up to 2000 detailed NPCs on screen
-Accurate weather cycling

Unity 4

Unity is a well known engine by Unity Technologies.

-Iterative lightmap baking
-DX11 support with scalability back to DX9
-Popular on mobile devices

Source 2

The Almighty Gaben has pretty much confirmed Source 2 in development.

4chan: So, tell us about Ricochet 2... is Valve potentially already working on a new engine? Source 2, could or could not be..?
Gabe: We've been working on Valve's new engine stuff for a while ...

4chan: Is it going to be more than an add-on engine for Source? Like, is it an entirely new engine?
Gabe: Yeah.

New Rockstar engine

Job ads listing Rockstar seeking engineers and programmers for to develop a next-gen ready engine.

-So far there will be a high level of focus on physics

 

[Oddduck]

With so many third parties making their own engines, I wouldn't be surprised if Unreal Engine loses some of its relevance.

 

[Dark_AnNiaLatOr]

To me, UE4 seems to be the least impressive, without thinking about all the bells and whistles like particle effects. I mean just by looking at it hem for a bit.

Edit - however seeing as what gears 3 did for 360, UE4 must be insane when put in masterful hands,

 

[RyanReedyMusic]

Really excited to see more Proprietary Engines that will be coming. I love to see in house stuff.

 

[Dictator93]

I wish you would use better cryengine 3 shots! Some of those are from old builds or even from cryengnie 2 (the ones of the faces)!

But naja!

Luminous and CE3 are the ones I am most interested in. The UE 4 lighting solution is rather unique, but they in general take shortcuts in that I am not fond of in other departments

 

[AppleMIX]

Isn't glacier2 engine designed for next gen also.

 

[Papercuts]

Isn't glacier2 engine designed for next gen also.

Yeah. Glacier 2 even on the current consoles is crazy, so I'm excited to see what they can do with more power.

 

[The Mana Legend]

I feel bad for Square. They can make some amazing engines, but with their ridiculous dev times and awful support for their engines, I can't imagine them doing much with their new engine.

Should have just licensed Unreal 4 like everyone else will.

 

[vocab]

No mention of Id Tech 3. Surely the next cod will be on it!

 

[Servizio]

Source 2 from Valve is theoretically in the works as well.

 

[RedSwirl]

I just realized that if Square Enix doesn't kill itself we could see Akihiko Yoshida character designs on the Luminous engine. Man that could be badass.

Also, I think it's a bit strange that we haven't see how Capcom is upgrading the MT Framework engine for next gen. It's been an excellent engine so far.

Really excited to see more Proprietary Engines that will be coming. I love to see in house stuff.

Not fully proprietary in the classic sense of each game having its own engine, but it is nice to at least see third party publishers investing in their own engines. Kind of a middle ground really that maintains the uniqueness of each company but still streamlines development.

 

[RedSwirl]

I feel bad for Square. They can make some amazing engines, but with their ridiculous dev times and awful support for their engines, I can't imagine them doing much with their new engine.

Should have just licensed Unreal 4 like everyone else will.

They did license UE4. And I think a lot of that dev time problem came from them kinda screwing up Crystal Tools. They tried to make it one big engine, but from what I heard ended up basically making it proprietary for each game anyway.

 

[we.are.the.armada]

Luminous gets me very excited being an art guy. The end of that SE vid, the shot of the city, it really put a smile on face to see a world realized like that seemingly in game. Damn, I can't wait for next gen consoles - E3 next year should be pretty exciting.

 

[Reiko]

With so many third parties making their own engines, I wouldn't be surprised if Unreal Engine loses some of its relevance.

The line is blurring between all of them.

 

[Lingitiz]

Source 2 better be mindblowing when it finally hits. Source still holds up pretty well despite being so old.

 

[watershed]

Seeing this stuff makes me sad for what will likely be the Wii U's limited graphical prospects. Also not looking forward to whatever price tag Sony and Microsoft slap on their next gen consoles.

 

[benny_a]

There is also AnvilNEXT. Powers AC3, AC3:L and maybe Watch Dogs?

Unless Watch Dogs is a different engine again but I doubt a single studio is working on two huge projects with two completely independent engines. It looked very cool in the E3 gameplay trailer.

Also next-gen Elder Scrolls on GameBryoNEXT ;-)

Nothing is known yet from Sony Santa Monica, but surely they are also working on something new.

 

[TunaLover]

The visual jump is indeed impressive

 

[Digital-Hero]

Source 2 better be mindblowing when it finally hits. Source still holds up pretty well despite being so old.

Really? That engine is quite dated and it shows.

 

[cj_iwakura]

Hope I'm not the only one hyped for what Atlus have in store with their P5 engine.

I love what they did with Gamebryo.

 

[ii Stryker]

tech demos and screen shots mean shit. UE3 looked fabulous until you tried building a game with it and then your textures wouldn't load into the scene for 3-5 seconds after you'd started playing.

I'd rather devs optimize their engines for the hardware nexgen in lieu of pushing it to where all the technical flaws stick out like a turd in a punchbowl like they did this gen. =/

 

[pseudocaesar]

Cant wait to see what Gueirlla and Naughty Dog cook up for the PS4. Also a next gen Infamous game would be fuckin baller

 

[Deadstar]

With so many third parties making their own engines, I wouldn't be surprised if Unreal Engine loses some of its relevance.

I really hope that it does. Whenever a ton of games use the same engine they start to feel samey unless the developer modifies the code heavily. You tend to see the same types of things over and over and it gets boring. I miss the old days when you never knew what to expect.

 

[rvy]

High hopes for FOX and the next version of MT Framework. Hopefully they are both very good and widely licensed to Japanese devs.

 

[Zyrusticae]

I really hope that it does. Whenever a ton of games use the same engine they start to feel samey unless the developer modifies the code heavily. You tend to see the same types of things over and over and it gets boring. I miss the old days when you never knew what to expect.

If by 'code' you mean 'shaders', then yes.

The 'unreal engine sheen' is really from the art director being lazy and sticking with the default shaders. It is NOT a fault of the engine itself.

(But before someone brings up Mirror's Edge, they threw out the lighting engine in favor of this one.)

High hopes for FOX and the next version of MT Framework. Hopefully they are both very good and widely licensed to Japanese devs.

MT Framework is a pretty good one. It runs extremely well on PCs; their optimization work is just out-of-this-world. I expect good things from them in the next generation of consoles.

I still want to see a PC port of Dragon's Dogma, tho...

 

[youta]

Personally I'd love to see more of the beautiful CANVAS engine. It ran quite well on the PS3, only slightly stuttering while moving through smoke bomb mist. It seems to me it'd be a good fit for the WiiU (somehow I don't think it's all that demanding, I may be wrong).

 

[Strike]

E3 2013 is going to be really fun. Hell, we'll probably get something from GDC beforehand.

 

[out0v0rder]

cant wait for the next call of duty to use a modified version of the quake III engine again

 

[Kahoona]

I'm really excited to see what Rockstar does with their RAGE engine and what that mad man John Carmack can come up with for id tech.

 

[Stallion Free]

The only one that is going to have a good public release is UE4 and because of that it's the only one interesting to me.

The rest just come down to how well the artists use them.

 

[DJIzana]

Definitely going to go with Cry Engine 3 and Luminous Engine looking the best.

Cry Engine 3 looks freaking amazing. I wasn't a fan of Crysis 2 but that could be because they didn't refine it as much as they have until what we've seen from Crysis 3. The cloth effects, toad tech, wind, you name it... everythiing looks amazing. If this engine has destruction as well (not procedural but on the level of like BF3 destruction) then I'd say this would be my first favorite.

Luminous... yah, will only be used by Square internally and considering it took them a year to make a 3 minute long video? I have zero faith that we'll see a next gen FF running on FULL Luminous any time soon.

 

[Boss Man]

Really excited to see more Proprietary Engines that will be coming. I love to see in house stuff.

I agree with this sentiment 100%.

Does anyone have enough experience to count the polygons in that toad?

 

[shinobi602]

Added Glacier 2, don't know why I forgot about that one.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Luminous Engine blows everything away right now.

UE4 looks super disappointing.

 

[Boss Man]

Luminous Engine blows everything away right now.

UE4 looks super disappointing.

I think UE4 is going to flex its muscle a lot more in motion.

 

[raven777]

http://youtu.be/pe3KFS3uAA0

Amazing character detail.

but we won't see this level of graphics in next-gen console I think, considering the spec of PC they were running Agni's Philosophy in.

 

[SapientWolf]

I really hope that it does. Whenever a ton of games use the same engine they start to feel samey unless the developer modifies the code heavily. You tend to see the same types of things over and over and it gets boring. I miss the old days when you never knew what to expect.

Great middleware is a big reason why indie game quality shot way up recently.

 

[Cake Boss]

Seems like particles and the amount of things you could put on screen are going to be the big thing for next gen.

 

[Phonomezer]

I want to believe in the Luminous Engine, but I'm not convinced. Don't know enough.

 

[Thoraxes]

Hitman Absolution looked really hot on PC. They had decent art direction to be served by the technology.

 

[ShinobiFist]

With so many third parties making their own engines, I wouldn't be surprised if Unreal Engine loses some of its relevance.

Its about time studios went back in making their own engines, fuck Unreal.

 

[Reiko]

tech demos and screen shots mean shit. UE3 looked fabulous until you tried building a game with it and then your textures wouldn't load into the scene for 3-5 seconds after you'd started playing.

I'd rather devs optimize their engines for the hardware nexgen in lieu of pushing it to where all the technical flaws stick out like a turd in a punchbowl like they did this gen. =/

That's probably what they've been doing behind the scenes.

 

[TheExodu5]

Isn't UE4 just branched off UE3? Certainly it wasn't branched off in 2003, was it?

 

[bigboss370]

i'm really impressed by CryEngine3 while at the same time really disappointed that all future Crytek games are going to be 'free-to-play'.

 

[watership]

Its about time studios went back in making their own engines, fuck Unreal.

And then 90 percent of those engines fail and money gets tight, they'll license out the best engine and in 2 years everything will be "THAT" engine. That's how all this works guys.

 

[Sulik2]

I am most excited by Cry engine 3. Stuff in cryengine just looks better than anything else I have seen. Star Citizen looks so amazing. With the complexity of next get art and animation I hope we don't see too many studios trying to make their own engines. The complexity and expense will put them out of business.

 

[legacyzero]

New Gen graphics always get me excited!

Gonna keep my eye on MGS, Agni, and BF4.

 

[Reiko]

And then 90 percent of those engines fail and money gets tight, they'll license out the best engine and in 2 years everything will be "THAT" engine. That's how all this works guys.

Case in point. Renderware dominated last gen.

 

[Epix]

Insane. (Luminous)

 

[shinobi602]

Insane. (Luminous)

Real time too...hnnnnng