What developer do you feel is pushing the technological envelope?

[Serenity Painted Death]

Some of that is realtime, some is CG...

95% of what they've shown has been real-time, though most of it has been real-time CUTSCENES. They've shown very little CG, though I do understand the Jump Festa trailer (which nobody has seen) had some new CGI in it. It's blatantly obvious which they're showing and when due to the differences in the models.

 

[_phil_]

hem... i don't really thing Crytek is pushing the envelope... as they don't really have an envelope.
ND should be in that list BTW ,or allmost nobody should...

 

[Turok]

Crytek. I mean, dont you need ray-tracing to be able to pull off real time ambient maps?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

What's an 'ambient map'? Although I guess you mean ambient occlusion, but I haven't seen such a thing in any Crysis videos. They have some nice soft ambient lighting.

And it's not a requisite to do ambient occlusion with raytracing, it's just that there aren't many other methods to effectively and precisely gather information about the surrounding scene.

 

[Fafalada]

Would it worry anybody it I owned up and said I don't know how many peeps we have running at the same time... As one of the principle designers of the army sections you'd think I'd know but well once we hit the 'enough' mark it kinda stopped being important.

Aren't you like worried that marketing people will come get you at night if they find out? I hear they can see in the dark and their eyes don't reflect any sunlight.

 

[Phil]

Sorry for quoting you Acert, but after voting for Kojima Studios, I just had to (no offence intended):

* Kojima studios
- See Bungie. The animations in game looks like placeholders, and ditto many of the graphics. Snake has some serious downgrades. The game will ultimately rock with a lot of new, great technology and gameplay elements. Just so far, ala Halo, we haven't seen anything worth being excited about. Outside killer movies.

Even though, only a fraction of the game (MGS4) has been shown so far, Konami / Kojima-Studios get my vote, because of the new technology that already has been demonstrated. When saying this, I'm specificially thinking about the 2nd trailer, I think the TGS one, which demonstrated the scale of the game, the level of interaction between enemies and the player. I'm particularly impressed by the idea of Metal-Gears being able to smash through walls, but also climb up structures or jump. The AI in itself seems to be quite advanced, especially when you think about the possibilities of using a camo-suit and what interesting gameplay mechanics and challenges that are introduced because of it. Also, the warzone seems to be anything but empty - which IMO speaks for the talent of the team if they do in fact bring this together all in one as successfully as they have done with the previous games as well. I certainly find what they have shown a lot more impressive than the purely visual advancements that other teams have shown off so far. This includes Polyphoney Digital with GT5/HD with - admittedly nice looking cars - but lacking other advancements on the gameplay level.

I also applaud Evolution Studios on Motorstorm with the mud since it's also something that extends beyond simply being eye-candy but tried to extend on the gameplay element.

As for the downgrades in MGS4, I'm not sure that's resulted in anything but long discussions based on bad footage or footage that showed the game under different lighting conditions that may show the game in a different light, opposed to previous released footage. The only thing I've seen established was the concious that newer media seemed to be a lot brighter and demonstrated less contrast which admittedly made the game look less impressive compared to that first MGS4 trailer. Or maybe I've just missed too much of the new media during my b3d break?

 

[Panajev2001a]

Aren't you like worried that marketing people will come get you at night if they find out? I hear they can see in the dark and their eyes don't reflect any sunlight.

If it were only that easy... you always leave out the best part: sharp teeth, long claws and well last but not least not reflecting in mirrors.