UnrealEngine3/Tim Sweeney Interview : Questions Welcomed

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What should we expect audio wise from the Unreal 3 engine (guh I know, it's not graphics but I'm curious)? :?

What is new in regards to the physics engine? I have always felt that most ragdoll physics engines don't have enough ground friction (bodies slide too much, and yes... another non-graphics question).

Could Tim define what the typical polycount is for their high-detail models are? I noticed in the Gamespot article that they are stating that it is into the millions before they are cut down to a more reasonable 6-7,000 polys in game. These numbers seem exceptionally high, are they just being creative writers or is this correct? http://www.gamespot.com/news/2004/03/24/news_6092217.html

It's great to hear about all of these cool graphical features, but it's hard to appreciate them without at least some pictures to show as examples.. When will the public get to view some of the Unreal 3 engine goodness? :(
 
Here is a bunch of questions that quickly comes to my mind concerning the UnrealEngine3:

Can you explain more in detail how powerful and general your dynamic soft shadows algorithm is and where its limitations are? Does it rely on additional geometry being rendered?
What about translucent objects?

I guess you use spherical harmonic lighting only for your static meshes. How does it interact with the dynamic soft shadowing? Do you also have some GI approximation for the world meshes? If yes, what about moving light sources?

Do you use or develop some technology to refine the silhouettes of the low-poly models (maybe based on the virtual displacement mapping but with a conditional texkill instruction)?
This would be the coolest (but probably slowest) improment I can imagine...

Does your physics engine support fluid dynamics (e.g. for realistic explosion dynamics)?

Even if this question is kinda obsolete nowadays: Do you have a new visibility system and what is the core spatial data structure you are using?

Do you support true volumetric smoke and explosions?


By the way, this is my first post in this forum.
 
How about scalability. FPS vs MMORPG.

It seems that MMORPGs are gaining in popularity. Seems some companies develope in house ala Sony with SWG and EQ2 vs Mythic leasing/buying a engine ala Turbin (sp?).

Does Mr. Sweeney see the Unreal Engine every making inroads to MMORPGS? And if so, how does it scale in regards to the graphic detail and number of players per zone, region, pixel what have you. If that makes sense?

While content is one thing, I'm finding it more enjoyable to have full body characters with more detail in their appearance. Rather than the flat textured faces with lack of detail we currently see outside of SWG.

I think it would be cool if his engine was ever picked for such a game. Provided it could scale accordingly with the number of people on a single server, zone, etc.

Have a good day.
 
saf1 said:
How about scalability. FPS vs MMORPG.

It seems that MMORPGs are gaining in popularity. Seems some companies develope in house ala Sony with SWG and EQ2 vs Mythic leasing/buying a engine ala Turbin (sp?).

Does Mr. Sweeney see the Unreal Engine every making inroads to MMORPGS? And if so, how does it scale in regards to the graphic detail and number of players per zone, region, pixel what have you. If that makes sense?

While content is one thing, I'm finding it more enjoyable to have full body characters with more detail in their appearance. Rather than the flat textured faces with lack of detail we currently see outside of SWG.

I think it would be cool if his engine was ever picked for such a game. Provided it could scale accordingly with the number of people on a single server, zone, etc.

Have a good day.
Click to expand...

I can answer that for you- a great big YES! AND it look GOOD too. And it's fast, very fast. And it's been modified to allow for seamless zones (ie no loading of levels, its all contiguous).

oh yeah, as for scalability.... imagine battles involving thousands of players. of course, you have to turn the graphics down a bit, but it's still smooth.
 
Laa-Yosh said:
Screen. Shots. Many of them. Please :)))
Click to expand...
The Baron said:
What feature that was previously impossible/unusable are you most looking forward to for the R500/NV50 generation?
Click to expand...
Essencial this ones.And BTW
Possible ,in game,aplications for the new stuff.
How usefull could be multi core/processores in consoles/PCs.
 
With more consumers buying HD-TV's in America at least, will the U3 engine allow for HD-TV resolutions in the console market and take advantage of the 16:9 aspect ratio?

Has Tim done a side by side comparison of an images compared at 1080i vs. 720p to see what looks better? Any thoughts on the technology differences of 1080i and 720p?

Will games made by Epic target 60fps at the highest TV resolution and scale back from that?
 
Does Tim have any first hand experience - as he seems to be massively multi-passing - of precision problems with FP16 - FP24 - FP32? Any qualitative comments (e.g. FP24 good enough for <16 passes)?
 
I seem to remember Sweeney once stated that FP32 really would be needed for his next generation stuff, FP24 would give artifacts. But don't quote me on that. :)
 
Ask him if he uses any LOD methods for the large outdoor enviroments or if its plain bruteforce and what kind of lighting method is used outdoors.
 
I believe I remember Tim has previously stated 64 bit CPUs would be advantageous for the UnrealEngine3 development tools. Is this still the case and what will someone with a 64 bit CPU be able to do that someone with a 32 bit CPU won't be able to do?
 
with the IBM PowerPC family of processors becomming more and more popular does he see porting the engine to that architecture, and what advantages/disadvantages (besides market penetration... heh, I said penetration... heheh... heh... anyways) would that architecture have over other 64-bit architectures for the UnrealEngine 3.
 
The current engine has support for Pix-o-matic, a software rendering driver.
Will there be support for a software renderer in the new engine? With all the new features this doesn't seem very likely.

Will the engine support dynamic reflections (particularly non-planar ones) and refractions? If so, are there any limits to their use?

Edit:
Does it use any kind of global illumination? If so, is it normal-mapped, like in Half-Life 2?
 
Is the new physics engine developed in house, or is it a new version of MathEngine's Karma ?

Any tool planned to capture the rendered output at any resolution, for Machinima uses?

Any chance at a 'realtime' editor alla Far Cry or Doom III(supposedly)?

What modeling apps do you use to create those 6 million poly preprocess models?

Is the GPU used to do general computations, such as physics?

Any chance for realtime deforming/destructible terrain? cloth/softbody dynamics? Fluid dynamics?
 
Do conditional branches and looping have a big impact in the performance of pixel shaders of the new engine? I. e. are PS3 fragment shaders considerably better than PS2 pixel shaders, if measured by average executed assembly tokens for a fragment shader?
 
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