Unreal Engine 4

[Dominik D]

Not sure if this is the best forum, but here it goes.

First screenshots and some random talk with Tim Sweeney on the future of gaming and UE4 from Wired. Most of the meat mirrors what he said during his GDC2012 presentations, so little surprises there.
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/05/ff_unreal4/all/1

I don't really understand why did they go for a demo with an art style that doesn't seam very compelling (as in: smells early nineties). But other than that - looks pretty good.

 

[McHuj]

So what are the odds that any new consoles will be revealed in June? It's seems weird that they publicly unveil the engine (potentially a game as well) for "unannounced" platforms. Seems like the platform holders would want to go first.

 

[Ike Turner]

So what are the odds that any new consoles will be revealed in June? It's seems weird that they publicly unveil the engine (potentially a game as well) for "unannounced" platforms. Seems like the platform holders would want to go first.

The "platform" is: PC. Epic has already announced that's it's working on a PC exclusive title (which will most probably be the first showcase game for UE4). IIRC It's already been confirmed by Microsoft and Sony that their won't be any new Xbox / PS announcemnt at this year's E3.

 

[straaljager]

Very underwhelming graphics tbh. Maybe it's all part of Epic's strategy to first show unimpressive screenhots with lackluster reception from gamers, so they can push console makers to build more powerful hardware.

 

[jlippo]

Lighting looks quite impressive, even more so if it doesn't require any preprocessing. (IE. move a wall in scene and it just works.)
GI seems to have quite nice resolution, works for specular as well..

 

[Brad Grenz]

I'm certain it looks much better in motion. They should not have let these screens out if they weren't prepared to release a video at the same time.

 

[ninelven]

It looks like CryEngine 3 >> UE4 at the moment. They are the only one's that seem to have realistic dynamic lighting down thus far... everything else I've seen just looks plastic sadly.

 

[rpg.314]

Very underwhelming graphics tbh. Maybe it's all part of Epic's strategy to first show unimpressive screenhots with lackluster reception from gamers, so they can push console makers to build more powerful hardware.

The next gen specs are baked in by now. It's too late to change anything major.

 

[Rangers]

The "platform" is: PC. Epic has already announced that's it's working on a PC exclusive title (which will most probably be the first showcase game for UE4). IIRC It's already been confirmed by Microsoft and Sony that their won't be any new Xbox / PS announcemnt at this year's E3.

Epic's "PC exclusive" titles in the works are almost certainly free to play, browser based and such if anything.

 

[pjbliverpool]

Epic's "PC exclusive" titles in the works are almost certainly free to play, browser based and such if anything.

Why would they be PC exclusive if they are merely browser based games? They'd be ignoring the huge tablet/phone market which would no doubt be capable of playing a "mere" browser based game just fine.

It makes more sense that this would be either a game that focusses on PC centric type gameplay (Team Fortress type thing) or a super high end game built on UE4 which will be claimed to be PC exclusive until the next gen consoles launch and it's released on them as a launch title with some enhancements.

 

[Acert93]

Putting aside any assessment of visuals the focus seems to be on the fact the engine is designed for real time iteration for game play and graphics as well as a graphics engine that works like a style sheet (e.g. like CSS create a universal property for your water and depending on the temperature and what not the artists just grab the water and it inherits all those properties so instead of apply a material to each surface the artists basically work with materials that are a little more dynamic and all functional in real time if I understood them correctly). Designing the engine, which is popular among 3rd parties where budgets are a bigger concern than 1st party, where both game play and content can be created quicker makes sense.

 

[Acert93]

It makes more sense that this would be either a game that focusses on PC centric type gameplay (Team Fortress type thing) or a super high end game built on UE4 which will be claimed to be PC exclusive until the next gen consoles launch and it's released on them as a launch title with some enhancements.

Or it is a PC exclusive because the new consoles suck ... or it is currently a PC exclusive because they cannot discuss the next gen platform it will be one ... or MS/Sony were not impressed and did not pick it up ... or ... many other options

 

[jlippo]

Found links to videos from gaf..

GT TV Episode

Exclusive Development Walkthrough

Exclusive Elemental Demo Showcase

Not bad at all..

 

[KKRT]

Am I the only one, who was more impressed with some other tech demo shots in GTTV show than actual Elemental presentation?
Like for example a scene when they destroyed a floor and it completely changed the lighting or showed lighting on particles, or global illumination.

Square demo was so much more impressive, but at least this one was running in 1080p on single GTX 680. What a pity they havent told us if it was 30 or 60fps.

 

[fellix]

I noticed the quite dull collision animation of the falling debris on the floor. Anyway, I think the reason so many people find this demo a bit underwhelming is probably due to the choice of the artistic presentation and not necessarily the technical features of the engine.

 

[Rodéric]

The most impressive part of UE4 isn't gfx IMO, it's the tools.

 

[eloic]

Wasn't the framerate just a tad sloppy or was it just me, perceiving it like that?

 

[AlNom]

The most impressive part of UE4 isn't gfx IMO, it's the tools.

Yep... but maybe they should have spent more time on the demo content if they're going to make it presentable to the world... a world not made up of programmers.

edit: I mean, they already showed this to devs at GDC, so...

 

[FirewalkR]

Yep... but maybe they should have spent more time on the demo content if they're going to make it presentable to the world... a world not made up of programmers.

edit: I mean, they already showed this to devs at GDC, so...

Well, it's hard to compete with the likes of Square in terms of sheer artistry.

Anyway, we can't really compare UE4 and Luminous (are we sure Luminous isn't just some layer on top of another engine, such as UE for example?) unless we see similar scenes generated by both.

I'm interested in hearing, however, what engine do you guys think is the more demanding in terms of hardware, to achieve the visuals we've seen?

 

[jlippo]

I'm quite sure that I heard presenter mention voxels when adjusting GI intensity.
Perhaps they use cone tracing on voxel presentation of the world to get all indirect lighting.
It might be nice for all those particle effects as well.