Cryengine 3 demo

[Amit]

Really? I disagree

I believe UE3 wins in both of the following:


[shot]

Maybe in those shots but the rest of them look better in CE3:

[ODX]

Always a fan of a CryEngineX jungle. The GDC06 one was the best though >

[343guiltymc]

Damn, that picture of the jungle in the CE3 shot is awesome. I always disliked the lightning in CE2.

[Jean-Luc]

Damn, that picture of the jungle in the CE3 shot is awesome. I always disliked the lightning in CE2.

Lighting in CE2 while under trees was somewhat too light. However, in that particular screen, it's far too dark. Unless you're in the rainforest, that light canopy of trees there will not cause objects underneath to go near pitch-black.

[Warsaw]

It will if the sun is that low on the horizon, as in that screenshot. Taken from the other angle, it would be a lot lighter.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

Imo, CE2 and CE3 seem to try to make it look as photorealistic as possible, whilst the UT3 engine seems to try to make the visuals as asthetically pleasing as possible.

[itszutak]

Hmm. Just looked through the pictures.

Some clarification:

CE2 (With an as-of-that-time unreleased TOD):

Pre-release UE2:


The other shots are mostly CE3, as far as I can tell.

[Ifafudafi]

Here's my radical theory: They're two different engines, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and neither is truly superior to the other in all respects.

CE3 (or CE2, at least) has the capability to render just about every graphical effect known to man, and therefore can support more detailed, realistic environments than UE3. UE3, on the other hand, has the benefit of age and experience, having been optimized and tweaked as much as possible to squeeze every last bit of performance, if at the cost of detail. From the CE3 demo we had, framerates seemed to be an issue, and while it's an early stage of development, it's pretty clear Crytek will probably need to cut back a bit on the pretty if they're to make it smooth.

CE3, due to the nature of Crysis (and Far Cry, to an extent) also is designed to render foliage as realistically as possible, whereas UE3 has generally been confined to more static, lifeless environments. UE3's got the edge with urban and/or interior environments, as evidenced by Jean-Luc's screens, whereas CE3's a little better at large, open environments, as shown in the jungle comparison. The face one doesn't count, since the UE3 shot there is from the first Gears of War; the current build of UE3 allows for much more complex faces.

Personally, I'd wait until we actually see some games on CE3 before any opinions are finalized, but at the end of the day, both engines really aren't any better than the other at everything; while they trump each other in some respects, they also naturally fall up short in others.

[Roostervier]

The face one doesn't count, since the UE3 shot there is from the first Gears of War; the current build of UE3 allows for much more complex faces.

I think it's a fair comparison since I saw that screenshot of the faces since before the release of CE2. I think they just took the pic and slapped the text "CE3" on it. So basically it's a comparison of faces rendered on old engines.

[Ifafudafi]

CE2 still had much more complex face rendering features than UE3; the point is that as of the CE3/UE3 comparison (which this is about as far as I know) it wouldn't be a fair comparison, unless CE3's cut back on some detail.