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[Shangounchained]

For instance games like Batman Arkham Knight! Still look fantastic even more than current games and it used a version of unreal engine 3, same as the discontinued star wars 1313

And why did unreal engine 3 die instantly?

 

[JordanN]

And why did unreal engine 3 die instantly?

It didn't?

In fact, I last recall Hi-Rez Studios (the developers behind Smite/Paladins) actually still uses UE3 or they only just switched to UE4 very recently.

TERA also uses UE3 and it's only the mobile ports that switched to UE4.

 

[Shangounchained]

It didn't?

In fact, I last recall Hi-Rez Studios (the developers behind Smite/Paladins) actually still uses UE3 or they only just switched to UE4 very recently.

TERA also uses UE3 and it's only the mobile ports that switched to UE4.

I just read that mk11 used unreal 3

 

[TylersProphecy4.0]

Doesnt grasshopper religiously use unreal 3 still?

I know let it die is unreal 3.

 

[Hugare]

"And why did unreal engine 3 die instantly? "

WTF? The engine was used by everyone during last gen

And yeah, Arkham Knight looks better than most UE 4 games because it used a modified version from Rocksteady. And they probably have some geniuses in there, because they can use the engine better than Epic.

Every Batman game was a technical showcase, and AK is not an exception

 

[JimboJones]

Didn't Arkham Knight have major issues with asset streaming which is what caused the issues on the PC port, although texture streaming was a big issue with U3 in general getting flash back to N64 textures in Gears of War 1 when the level loaded.

 

[bilderberg]

AK looking as good as it does is more to the artwork than tech. Neon signs and rain soaked streets are always going to look good. Their are areas where I think UE4 would have benefited the game, like PBR and lighting. Star Wars 1313 was played on pc hardware more powerful than current gen systems. No way in hell would the game have looked that good. I think we would have seen another Watch Dogs downgrade scenario had the game actually been released.

 

[DiscoJer]

Didn't UE3 games have a problem where textures would just pop in? Mass Effect was notorious for this. Maybe they fixed it later...

 

[Shangounchained]

AK looking as good as it does is more to the artwork than tech. Neon signs and rain soaked streets are always going to look good. Their are areas where I think UE4 would have benefited the game, like PBR and lighting. Star Wars 1313 was played on pc hardware more powerful than current gen systems. No way in hell would the game have looked that good. I think we would have seen another Watch Dogs downgrade scenario had the game actually been released.

I don't trust what Ur saying, because Arkham Knight uses pbr aswell and injustice 2 is a ue3 title, mortal Kombat 11 is ue3 and alot of ue4 games are good because of art direction I remember they remade Arkham asylum with ue4 and it looked uglier

 

[God Enel]

Isn't mortal mortal kombat still made with UE3?

and look at Batman's guns in that last pic. Damn

 

[Airbus Jr]

Saying UE3 better than UE4 is like saying PS3 is better than PS4 or terminator t-100 is better than terminator rev-9

 

[CamHostage]

I'm not so knowledgeable about tech, but as I understand it, UE4 isn't just "UE3-but-one-better", in the way we all think of upgrades as being everything that came before plus more.

UE4 replaced and changed the way many things were done with more modern and powerful methods. Those functions were "better" in most ways, but were different enough that UE3 is its own thing that a developer could still work in if they were comfortable and adept with those techniques (especially if they had tons of custom code that basically made the engine its own Frankenstein creation that was no longer the same engine as it started with.) I believe there are even things UE3 does that do not have a direct equivalent in UE4? (These would be things possible to recreate in UE4, but that you would have to handle differently and with a expectation of dissimilar results.) There don't seem to be a lot of developers who are championing UE3 as good enough over UE4 anymore (there was a time when it was debated whether the crossover was worth it, but with the scripting language and the development team suite so improved and all the platform support, it's now apparently a no-brainer,) but if you're already deep into UE3 and had to go to UE4, it'd take a heck of a lot of work and modification just to get back to generally where you started.

All of this contributes to why Return to Arkham Collection came out differently (though it appears they also used new lighting functions which bled into each other or were left natural instead of fudged-for-effect; either way, the look of the collection had a lot of differences that ended up being problems, despite being on more powerful hardware, and some effects were "missing".) Similarly, it's why even all these years later Netherealm is still using their heavily modified, tailor-made, "radically different" flavor of UE3 to make its games today. You don't "upgrade" a UE3 game to UE4; you port it, with all the inherent modifications that porting contributes to a game product.

(*Please shame me for everything stupid I said above. I've read up on various engines, but as far as first-hand-knowledge, I'm still intimidated by crafting my own LittleBigPlanet levels...)
(*Also, none of that answers the original question of if a UE3 game could potentially outshine a fairly-matched UE4 competitor...)

 

[Shangounchained]

Saying UE3 better than UE4 is like saying PS3 is better than PS4 or terminator t-100 is better than terminator rev-9

Not really doesn't work that way

 

[Airbus Jr]

Not really doesn't work that way

Doesnt work that way how?

Off course it is

newer tech will always be more advanced than older one

 

[The Cockatrice]

UE4 can look far greater if devs would stop forcing TAA as the only AA solution in games. I'm really tired of having to add sharpening to every game just to get rid of blurry as shit. Even nvidia made a control panel setting for sharpening just because everyone uses that piece of shit TAA.

 

[Stitch]

UE4 can look far greater if devs would stop forcing TAA as the only AA solution in games. I'm really tired of having to add sharpening to every game just to get rid of blurry as shit. Even nvidia made a control panel setting for sharpening just because everyone uses that piece of shit TAA.

You could try this

Sharpness Tweak for blurry Anti-Aliasing :: Espire 1: VR Operative General Discussions

The default TAA in Unreal games is terrible, but thankfully it can be tweaked with ini-magic Put these lines in your C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Espire1\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\Engine.ini r.TemporalAACatmullRom=1 r.TemporalAAPauseCorrect=1 r.TemporalAASamples=4 r.Tonemapper.Sharpen=3...

steamcommunity.com

seems to work in every UE4 game

 

[HaveButOneLife]

1313 would've likely been downgraded.

Doesnt grasshopper religiously use unreal 3 still?

I know let it die is unreal 3.

Isn't Let it Die Unreal 4?

 

[Shifty]

Despite OP's abject lack of actual computer knowledge, the answer here is 'yes'.

UE3 had a bunch of proprietary licensed tech that Epic weren't allowed to ship with 4 when they open-sourced it, so they've had to build their own lesser equivalents that can be released to the general public.

It's been a few months since I actively followed UE4's release notes, but to my knowledge this process is still ongoing. 4 will eclipse 3 eventually, but making free-and-open-source equivalents of popular game engine middleware takes time.

UE4 can look far greater if devs would stop forcing TAA as the only AA solution in games. I'm really tired of having to add sharpening to every game just to get rid of blurry as shit. Even nvidia made a control panel setting for sharpening just because everyone uses that piece of shit TAA.

Yeah, Epic have some funny priorities when it comes to notable features like that.

You can't customize the main camera's projection matrix because they reserved it for implementing part of TAA, so even if you don't use TAA you're being blocked from a useful feature because someone on their tools team thought that smeary-blurry AA was more important than the fundamental rendering pipeline

Doesnt work that way how?

Off course it is

newer tech will always be more advanced than older one

Not if there are lawyers telling you that part of said tech has to be pulled out and replaced between generations.

 

[Airbus Jr]

Despite OP's abject lack of actual computer knowledge, the answer here is 'yes'.

UE3 had a bunch of proprietary licensed tech that Epic weren't allowed to ship with 4 when they open-sourced it, so they've had to build their own lesser equivalents that can be released to the general public.

It's been a few months since I actively followed UE4's release notes, but to my knowledge this process is still ongoing. 4 will eclipse 3 eventually, but making free-and-open-source equivalents of popular game engine middleware takes time.


Yeah, Epic have some funny priorities when it comes to notable features like that.

You can't customize the main camera's projection matrix because they reserved it for implementing part of TAA, so even if you don't use TAA you're being blocked from a useful feature because someone on their tools team thought that smeary-blurry AA was more important than the fundamental rendering pipeline


Not if there are lawyers telling you that part of said tech has to be pulled out and replaced between generations.

Still dont understand what this means

Let me make this simpler and less complicated for everyone...

New tech...wether its pc, laptop, smartphone, game engine, videogame console etc will always be better than the previous model...

 

[TimFL]

Still dont understand what this means

Let me make this simpler and less complicated for everyone...

New tech...wether its pc, smartphone, game engine, etc will always be better than the previous model...

It means that UE3 had licensed middleware they could not add into UE4 due to it being open source, so they are still working on re-creating said UE3 licensed middleware to have "feature parity". Wait, that's what the guy above wrote... not sure what's so hard to understand about that?

 

[Shifty]

Still dont understand what this means

Let me make this simpler and less complicated for everyone...

New tech...wether its pc, smartphone, game engine, etc will always be better than the previous model...

Think of it in the context of a car.

Say you have a car manufacturer called 'Fnord', and they put out a cutting-edge 2019 model with a revolutionary new autopilot system that's been licensed from up-and-coming tech company 'Tezla'.

Fast forward to 2021, and the deal on that autopilot system expires. Tezla refuses to renew Fnord's license because they have plans to enter the car manufacturing business themselves, so any future models of Fnord's car won't have it.
Fnord doesn't have time to replace or reinvent that system for the launch of their 2021 model, so it comes out and despite having an improved design, is less cutting-edge than the 2019 one because it no longer has autopilot.
Thus, your rule of 'newer is always better' is broken, because you can totally release something that is newer but worse in some respect.

This is effectively what happened with the transition between UE3 and UE4, but with the licensing deal being revoked because Epic chose to go open-source rather than because the licensors are making their own game engines.

 

[VFXVeteran]

UE4 has PBR, RTX and generally very good robust additions and optimizations to UE3. SW:1313 doesn't look nearly as good as SW:JFO. Gears 5 however, still uses some of the old shading tech. I think UE4 is the best engine to date for most studios to adopt. Their shader tree reminiscent of Maya's hypershade is truly a godsend.

 

[PSlayer]

I'm not so knowledgeable about tech, but as I understand it, UE4 isn't just "UE3-but-one-better", in the way we all think of upgrades as being everything that came before plus more.

UE4 replaced and changed the way many things were done with more modern and powerful methods. Those functions were "better" in most ways, but were different enough that UE3 is its own thing that a developer could still work in if they were comfortable and adept with those techniques (especially if they had tons of custom code that basically made the engine its own Frankenstein creation that was no longer the same engine as it started with.) I believe there are even things UE3 does that do not have a direct equivalent in UE4? (These would be things possible to recreate in UE4, but that you would have to handle differently and with a expectation of dissimilar results.) There don't seem to be a lot of developers who are championing UE3 as good enough over UE4 anymore (there was a time when it was debated whether the crossover was worth it, but with the scripting language and the development team suite so improved and all the platform support, it's now apparently a no-brainer,) but if you're already deep into UE3 and had to go to UE4, it'd take a heck of a lot of work and modification just to get back to generally where you started.

All of this contributes to why Return to Arkham Collection came out differently (though it appears they also used new lighting functions which bled into each other or were left natural instead of fudged-for-effect; either way, the look of the collection had a lot of differences that ended up being problems, despite being on more powerful hardware, and some effects were "missing".) Similarly, it's why even all these years later Netherealm is still using their heavily modified, tailor-made, "radically different" flavor of UE3 to make its games today. You don't "upgrade" a UE3 game to UE4; you port it, with all the inherent modifications that porting contributes to a game product.

(*Please shame me for everything stupid I said above. I've read up on various engines, but as far as first-hand-knowledge, I'm still intimidated by crafting my own LittleBigPlanet levels...)
(*Also, none of that answers the original question of if a UE3 game could potentially outshine a fairly-matched UE4 competitor...)

This is actually a good explanation. Thanks!

 

[cireza]

New tech...wether its pc, laptop, smartphone, game engine, videogame console etc will always be better than the previous model...

So why do all current TVs have motion blur, which was inexistent in CRT TVs ?

It is NEVER as simple as that. You always gain something, you always lose something.

 

[Later Alligator]

Still dont understand what this means

Let me make this simpler and less complicated for everyone...

New tech...wether its pc, laptop, smartphone, game engine, videogame console etc will always be better than the previous model...

what he's saying is pretty straight forward and there's some good technical discussion happening. there's no need to dumb it down to UE4 is greater than UE3 because 4 > 3

really it will vary from development team to development team on which is superior based on their needs

was windows vista better than windows xp because it is newer?

 

[EightBit Man]

Even the early Unreal Engine 3-run games hold up very well in my book. I basically skipped the current generation because games don't have to look better beyond a certain point.

 

[Shangounchained]

Despite OP's abject lack of actual computer knowledge, the answer here is 'yes'.

UE3 had a bunch of proprietary licensed tech that Epic weren't allowed to ship with 4 when they open-sourced it, so they've had to build their own lesser equivalents that can be released to the general public.

It's been a few months since I actively followed UE4's release notes, but to my knowledge this process is still ongoing. 4 will eclipse 3 eventually, but making free-and-open-source equivalents of popular game engine middleware takes time.


Yeah, Epic have some funny priorities when it comes to notable features like that.

You can't customize the main camera's projection matrix because they reserved it for implementing part of TAA, so even if you don't use TAA you're being blocked from a useful feature because someone on their tools team thought that smeary-blurry AA was more important than the fundamental rendering pipeline


Not if there are lawyers telling you that part of said tech has to be pulled out and replaced between generations.

You writing alot doesn't mean you know shit about computers u can go sit on unreal 4!

 

[Shangounchained]

UE4 has PBR, RTX and generally very good robust additions and optimizations to UE3. SW:1313 doesn't look nearly as good as SW:JFO. Gears 5 however, still uses some of the old shading tech. I think UE4 is the best engine to date for most studios to adopt. Their shader tree reminiscent of Maya's hypershade is truly a godsend.

Studios simply invested heavily in ue4 they could have done the same with ue3, and about pbr yes it is used in ue3 and rtx can be used aswell it's simply in the direct X api and about star wars 1313 remember it's a game designed in 2013 if they made it today it'll look just like fallen order and aswell other things looked better in starwars 1313 they had volumetric flames for god's sake!

 

[nkarafo]

I never really liked UE3. Early on most games had texture streaming issues. Unreal Tournament 3 was also an ugly, forgettable game, unlike UT2003 that blew my mind when it was released.

 

[MrCunningham]

"And why did unreal engine 3 die instantly? "

WTF? The engine was used by everyone during last gen

And yeah, Arkham Knight looks better than most UE 4 games because it used a modified version from Rocksteady. And they probably have some geniuses in there, because they can use the engine better than Epic.

Rocksteady uses a heavily modified version of UE3 that basically uses its own rendering engine that is built on top of UE3. Neither Realm Studios also uses a heavily modified UE3 engine of their own for Injustice and Mortal Kombat series. I believe the reason why neither developer made the jump to UE4 is because of the work required to port all of their custom engine components to UE4.

 

[Shangounchained]

I never really liked UE3. Early on most games had texture streaming issues. Unreal Tournament 3 was also an ugly, forgettable game, unlike UT2003 that blew my mind when it was released.

Texture streaming is something you fix by software easy but then again theres unreal 4 and too much investment on it

 

[Ivory Blood]

Damn, 1313 looks on par with Fallen Order, even better I'd say.

 

[VFXVeteran]

Studios simply invested heavily in ue4 they could have done the same with ue3, and about pbr yes it is used in ue3 and rtx can be used aswell it's simply in the direct X api and about star wars 1313 remember it's a game designed in 2013 if they made it today it'll look just like fallen order and aswell other things looked better in starwars 1313 they had volumetric flames for god's sake!

Well of course. That's the very definition of incrementing your rendering engine. UE4 is up-to-date UE3. UE3 = UE4 - minus updates.

I don't see them being separated like that though. UE4 is just their latest iteration.

 

[Shangounchained]

Damn, 1313 looks on par with Fallen Order, even better I'd say.

This is true in a way and what's funny is fallen order has an asset streaming problem aswell

 

[Tesseract]

UE4 can look far greater if devs would stop forcing TAA as the only AA solution in games. I'm really tired of having to add sharpening to every game just to get rid of blurry as shit. Even nvidia made a control panel setting for sharpening just because everyone uses that piece of shit TAA.

apex uses adaptive supersampling and it looks goddamn miraculous (with a fantastic frame pacer)

TAA makes me wanna smash my face in, i usually just turn off all anti aliasing and let the jagged edges cut into the black matter of my brain

 

[VFXVeteran]

This is true in a way and what's funny is fallen order has an asset streaming problem aswell

So does Terminator (which also uses UE4). I think SW:1313 looks on par with JFO save the character shading (which is far better in JFO).

 

[Shifty]

You writing alot doesn't mean you know shit about computers u can go sit on unreal 4!

Well, they say there are 10 kinds of people in this world. You're clearly the 0

 

[JordanN]

Since this thread is still going, there was one thing about UE3 that was actually better than UE4.

I was trying to work on some cartoon graphics and noticed UE4 had a problem with keeping consistent colors. The way post processing was handled is that the engine would clamp all white pixels to grey, which made things look more washed out.

Topics tagged unreal-engine & question

Topics tagged unreal-engine & question

answers.unrealengine.com

It was also harder to actually make your own custom lighting. One downside to switching to PBR is that for something that is meant to be stylized and you didn't want something like Pixar-visuals, you had to go through a lot of hoops to change things like specular size (because for realistic purposes, PBR requires all your lighting be energy conserving. But if your goal isn't realism, you wouldn't want this feature).

Custom specular calculation

Hi All, I’ve noticed that I wanted to have specular reflections in my scenes, but found the “realistic” rendering of Unreal Engine 4 insufficient. Therefore I made a trick to emulate specular highlights. It is a trick, because the coordinate of the light source Is hardcoded in the shader. This...

forums.unrealengine.com

Other than that, I can't actually think of a reason why UE3 would be better than UE4. You had to have been doing something incredibly niche like in those above examples to make you reconsider, but even then, I still found ways to get the graphics I wanted in the engine.

 

[SirKicksalot]

Is there any UE4 game with better destruction than Stranglehold?
The baked lighting in Mirror's Edge is still amazing, wasn't matched until Assassin's Creed Unity.

 

[Shangounchained]

Well, they say there are 10 kinds of people in this world. You're clearly the 0

And Ur the -1

 

[bilderberg]

Well, they say there are 10 kinds of people in this world. You're clearly the 0

And Ur the -1

 

[Elder Legend]

I just read that mk11 used unreal 3

MK11 uses 3.5 not 3.