PocketMatrix

The Real World™ is incredible in just about every aspect, except one. There's no RESET BUTTON!

I'm sure Halo is all that, but when are they finally going to release it?!? They've been yanking my chain since early 2000 saying it's "coming soon" for PC and Mac. And as of yet it's only released on that stinkin' xbox, and I ain't buyin' that shit.

The future's bright - the future's a Half-Life shade of orange.

Cough - err, hmm.

while I hate to drag non PC games in here too, I dont think any game released has the complexity and motion of the fighters in tecmos DoA series (and incidently, their upcoming beach volyball game which is escentialy the same models), VF4 also haveing some good looking character models.


And as for environments, I have to hand that off to final fantasy X for PS, square is as good at makeing realtime 3d environments as they are pre rendered back in the days of ff7-9. No one could beat out the number of high quality scens they had to pump out. And while most of FFX's scenes rarly have any realtime interaction (trees and grass that move when brushed against, same with water), trees still had animation, water was extreamly well animated (Amazing looking water falls in some of the first few scenes outside of zanarkin) and deascent other particle effects.

Btw while I must say I allways loved the skies in unreal from an artistic point of view as technical (heck, everyone else was useing a solid bitmap or hacked in effect, unreal was one of the first to do a portal sky allowing for a real 3d sub scene to be used)they are no longer the only ones useing it, and while games still come out that have really crappy looking skies, there are games out there with awsome looking skies, so many infact that chooseing just one is more of an artistical value. I know of many skies in FFX that looks real good (often a staged sky with sunset and stuff), I also liked some of the skys in tribes2. Heck, Alice has one of my fav skies, in the chess board levels it had a checkard cieling almost (Alice used alot of portal skies, AND encironments all together, the chess levels used a brick cage that was renderd around the entire level (well, it looked like it, of course it was actually only renderd aroudn the character at all times), and teh school level had a combination portal and optical illusion to simulate endless stacks of books. Alice btw is still one of my fav graphicaly impressive games. The artwork, high res teaxtures, level layouts, and effects are stunning)

btw if I had to pick a dominant effect all games need to shoot for.. particle effects. you can't do ANYTHING without good particle effects! smoke, fire, water, animation, so much relies on a good looking particle effect engine.

well, doom3 and UT2 are not out yet, and while I have actually seen doom3 in motion and can admit that it is also by far some of the best realtime graphic rendering ever seen on the face of a system, its all very alpha. UT2 is looking eal good... but thats were its goodness ends atm, extended play on the techTV channel this week has some reascent ut2 footage and I can tell you that the framerate is not there yet. I could not think for a moment that this game was not being run on a top of the line machiene so I can say reliably that UT2's current framerate isnt even playable by a normal FPers standereds. As much as I would like to hope that the fps will increase by its release, we all have seen our fair share of stellar games that are plagued with many problems like this on release. Some don't ever get them fixed. BTW, am I the only one a bit worried that UT2 and U2 are neither being made by epic, but some companies that are only known for console translations and add on packs? These guys know nothing about creating actual game engines.

The framerate is fine, Extended Play messed up with that one. I've played the Alpha myself, and being a year old, it still runs at a quite good speed with the graphics all the way up. And Epic have said it's far faster in the real demo. Don't infer too many things from Extended Play, imo the show isn't all that intelligent.

The engine was made by Epic, the games are being made by those 2 companies, both on the Unreal Warfare engine. (correct me if I'm wrong here)

I can't wait until Doom III, id has never let me down with it's engine technology. The shadow engine looks to be really something, and this may be the kick OGL2 needs to do good.

As for the actual topic, Tribes II has the best looking terrain and water effects I've seen in a long time. CS' weapons are a bad attempt at realism, America's Army will have to show CS how it's done.

OMG WTF WALLHAX0R!!!

I get 30 fps with the Unreal Warfare engine on a Pentium 3 1ghz, with a geforce 4 card. 1024x768 res, with everything pumped up to high. 20 fps is "playable" to my standards. Other beta testers get 60-140 fps with good systems. I got bored, so heres a link to some benchmarks:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1647&p=1

If that isn't playable to normal FPS'er standards, I don't know what is.
I don't know what you guys have heard from places, but Epic is working on BOTH titles. Don't believe a beta tester? Look at the websites:

www.unrealtournament2003.com
www.unreal2.com

Look at the first question under the FAQ column. The Co-creator of UT 2003, Digital Extremes, also completed Unreal and UT with Epic. I think they know a little something about creating a game enigne, eh? Legend, the co-creator of U2 helped Epic create the Unreal Mission Pack : Return to Na-Pali. A very decent one imo. They have done way better in Unreal 2. And yes, Epic did create the Unreal Warfare engine.

If you still don't believe me, Americas Army is based on the same engine. We will see the results. See you in WW3, ahem, uh, Americas Army
[/list]