New Reality Engine Footage

[XavierS]

I just noticed that Artificial-Studios released a new video last week showcasing their reality engine in a FPS setting. It is the first video at this page: http://www.artificialstudios.com/techdemos.php . I thought it was pretty impressive considering it was spun off of Cry-Havoc which claims to have 128 players in a multiplayer game that is a mix between a FPS and a RTS. They give a lot of details about the engine, including stuff like Pre-Computed Radiance Transfer and realtime radiosity which I sadly do not know too much about . They even have some stuff about the games that are going to use the engine.

Anyway, I just wondered what you guys thought about it. It doesn't look nearly as impressive as say Unreal Engine 3 to me but perhaps its just the artwork?

 

[DudeMiester]

afaik UE3 doesn't have nearly as advanced a static lighting system as that engine, but I probably don't have all the details.

 

[KimB]

Doesn't look like anything special to me, from the screens.

Oh, and realtime radiosity is essentially impossible (now and for a while to come, if ever...other techniques will probably give better results for realtime situations). They may be doing something that is a very, very rough approximation of global illumination, but is certainly not the radiosity algorithm itself.

 

[Moloch]

Doesn't look like anything special to me, from the screens.

Oh, and realtime radiosity is essentially impossible (now and for a while to come, if ever...other techniques will probably give better results for realtime situations). They may be doing something that is a very, very rough approximation of global illumination, but is certainly not the algorithm itself.

Did you see the movies
Those look incredbal, and they run in 9700 pros
the backyard one is cool, but i like the mansion one the best.

 

[KimB]

Well, just saw the game demo. Downloading mansion now. But the game demo really didn't look like anything special. The dynamic shadowing was extremely simplistic (flashlights didn't cast shadows, for one), and the bloom overdramatic, and I saw nothing there that FarCry hasn't already done. So far, this just doesn't look like a next-generation engine to me, and it certainly has nothing on UE3.

Edit: I'm not commenting on the gameplay, just the engine. Might be a great game, I dunno. But so far it seems, well, a bit derivative.

 

[KimB]

Oh, my GOD. The beginning of that Mansion demo? Straight from here:
http://www.humus.ca/index.php?page=3D&ID=38

Anyway, I find it sad that they stated support for soft shadowing, but you never see it in the demo. This demo showed us nothing that DOOM3 hasn't already, so I don't find it impressive in the least.

 

[Kaotik]

Oh, my GOD. The beginning of that Mansion demo? Straight from here:
http://www.humus.ca/index.php?page=3D&ID=38

I believe we've gone through that thing already?
IIRC they even credited humus for a while for the textures until it came out that humus picked them from some free texture collection himself, no?

 

[Diplo]

I think people on this forum have a hard time admitting they are impressed with anything...

I actually thought the game demo looked really good. Yes, the lens flare effects were overdone, but overall it looked like it combined the best bits from the current Crytek, Unreal and Source engines. Sure we've probably seen it all before, but it looked well implemented and integrated and most of all seemed fun (which is no easy task). Are we really so jaded and spoiled that we can't appreciate a good thing when we see it? No it's probably not going to rival UE3, but I suspect it's a hell of a lot cheaper to licence and will perform better on current or near-future hardware. Oh, and the gameplay looked like fun, too

 

[PeterAce]

I'd like to see a runtime demo of this. It was mentioned here (Sept 2004) that one would be released after a month, but we are still waiting!

 

[GameCat]

They seem to have a nice enough engine, but the art and animation is horrible. Hire better artists guys! Just look at how impressive the technically fairly simple Unreal engine 3 shots look with good art. Not that UE3 is likely to be technically simple, it's just some of the published shots that are.

 

[Freak'n Big Panda]

I think people on this forum have a hard time admitting they are impressed with anything...

Yea so true.. anybody know what the deal is? I Can't remember a thread where somebody stated they were truly impressed but then again maybe I'm just pessimistic. This video is quite impressive BTW Both the graphics (lighting) and physics look more advanced than any game I've see or played.

 

[Kaotik]

I'd like to see a runtime demo of this. It was mentioned here (Sept 2004) that one would be released after a month, but we are still waiting!

Is their "evaluation kit" available?
Since this has been at their site for ages: "A multiplayer game set on a fully realized remote island outpost, including a dynamic day/night cycle & weather. Available only in our evaluation kit."

 

[Sxotty]

I agree the art, notably the models and textures thereon for characters were so terrible that it detracted from the entire thing. When I watched it I simply thought it looked pathetic, but I think that is the effect of just a few minor problems, and not necessarily indicative of the entire product.

 

[KimB]

Yea so true.. anybody know what the deal is? I Can't remember a thread where somebody stated they were truly impressed but then again maybe I'm just pessimistic. This video is quite impressive BTW Both the graphics (lighting) and physics look more advanced than any game I've see or played.

Well, it's not often, but it certainly does happen. The UE3 engine footage was very impressive. As was the original DOOM3 presentation (shadowing like that had never been seen before), and so was the original Halo presentation (the physics were just amazing for the time). The early UT2003 demos showing off the new physics were also quite impressive. And then there's the early Half-life 2 videos that showed off the use of physics in the game as a gameplay element.

I'm sure I could think of more if I thought for a bit longer, but there have certainly been a number of times that people have been impressed (almost unilaterally) by a new game demo. This particular one, though, isn't showing us anything that Doom 3 doesn't already do, so I see no reason to praise it.

If they wanted to put together an impressive demo for DX9-level hardware, they should have made one that highlights any developer tools that they've produced to make designing games with the engine easy. In particular, they need a good shader building interface that allows artists to make shaders without being programmers or needing programmers.

 

[XxStratoMasterXx]

Chalnoth,

Well this does have subsurface scattering for more realistic light-passing-through objects.

HDR etc... is all in the D3 engine, and the shadowing is better in D3, so I'm guessing you're correct

 

[Goragoth]

This particular one, though, isn't showing us anything that Doom 3 doesn't already do, so I see no reason to praise it.

PRT? Virtual displacement mapping? Doom3 does neither of those and UE3 doesn't have PRT AFAIK. I do think they have a lot technology and I guess there's more to come but they are lacking a bit content but then again I don't think they are looking to publish a game themselves but rather just license out the engine.

 

[XxStratoMasterXx]

This particular one, though, isn't showing us anything that Doom 3 doesn't already do, so I see no reason to praise it.

PRT? Virtual displacement mapping? Doom3 does neither of those and UE3 doesn't have PRT AFAIK. I do think they have a lot technology and I guess there's more to come but they are lacking a bit content but then again I don't think they are looking to publish a game themselves but rather just license out the engine.

VDM is merely a shader. There was a mod for that in D3 (content wasn't built for it though).

PRT is only good really for static objects, shadow maps and shadow volumes are much better solutions for fully realtime and dynamic shadows.

 

[squarewithin]

HDR etc... is all in the D3 engine, and the shadowing is better in D3, so I'm guessing you're correct

Doom 3 didn't have HDR. Carmack said he experimented with a render path for it but never included it in the game.

 

[DjordySeelmann]

Most of you see it from the wrong perspective, and are too biased to see what this engine really is capable of and what places it ahead of the competition.

Just to start, Reality was the first engine to utilize virtual displacement (parallax) mapping, moreover, the first engine using PRT to this degree (which is superior to static lightmaps, period). None of the top-tier engines supports a day/night cycle, and now I'm just talking about features. And this all on current mid-range hardware.

What makes this engine superior to Doom 3 is that it does at least the same, scaled from indoors to large outdoor environments, while Doom 3 was oriented at indoors only. If you want to know what else Reality does compared to other engines, http://artificialstudios.com/reasons.php

Moreover, it seems most of you don't have any idea what Reality enables you to do as a game developer. You set up your prefabs in Max or Maya, and export it to their WYSIWYG editor, with a good shader building interface implemented into it. Moreover you're able to control the basic physics in it, and the most outstanding feature, networked level editing!

Quote from http://artificialstudios.com :

Edit AND play levels in realtime with other artists, with all content being managed on a centralized server keeping everyone up to date. Anyone else joins and they will receive the latest in-progress version of the level.

Also implemented in the editor is a VoIP application. Here's a shot to get an idea what the editor looks like, more can be found on the dev portal of Reality.

Tutorials concerning the tools can give you a slight idea how Reality's tools work, they can be found at the Developer Portal.

Artificial Studios is a studio that came out of nowhere, has no current funding (all employees are actually volunteers and doing this next to their job/study!), and no reputation, I don't see any reason to turn down on them this way. Ever tried to compete with the big guys like Epic who have the money to hire the best artists of the world, and over 25 of them?

Those textures in the Mansion aren't Humus', they are freeware. Backgrounds on that story can be found here, the Lead Programmer of Reality even comments on the case.

Art is pretty good, surely not perfect or mindblowing, but I don't see anything that's ugly or what-so-ever, you guys must be too spoiled to see that overall, there's nothing wrong with it.

Their evaluation kit has been available for quite a while now, here you can request one: http://artificialstudios.com/contact.php

All this taken in mind; I think Reality Engine is a competitive, and especially a cheaper engine compared to all engines aimed at current and next-gen hardware.

 

[DjordySeelmann]

VDM is merely a shader. There was a mod for that in D3 (content wasn't built for it though).

PRT is only good really for static objects, shadow maps and shadow volumes are much better solutions for fully realtime and dynamic shadows.

PRT is scalable to deformable objects, moreover, Doom 3 uses stencil shadows, not shadow maps or shadow volumes.

Shadow maps and shadow volumes to compete with PRT? Try scaling shadow maping and volumes to a huge outdoor environment, the lack of fillrate will kill you. PRT is absolutely the best solution for 'real-time' radiosity at this moment.