Cry Engine VS Unreal Engine
polycounter
I was very amazed about the new Cry Engine Trailer:
http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=2509
What do you think is the best engine?
http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=2509
What do you think is the best engine?
Replies
main is work of artists, and not teh power lol
The Cry Engine looks great, but I would venture to guess that when that game ships it will only be playable on maybe 10% of machines. Also, there is no way it is going to look that good on a 360 if they can even get it to run on one.
Unreal is great for doing closed in environments but it sucks for the kind of thing they are doing with Crysis and the big, open, lush environments.
and besides that, its not all about looks, engines do way more crap like physics, crowd simulations, ai.. all of this is being integrated into newer engines, asthetics is only part of the battle.
main is work of artists, and not teh power lol
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I think this is the most elegant phrase I have ever seen grace the pages of Polycount. Perhaps I should use this as my sig.
I'm sure the Crytek engine is better for large outdoors, and if you have seen the videos of their level editor, with all the mesh brushes etc. well, it's awesome for the kind of game they're making and it's easier and faster to get better results than with other engines.
Indoors or indoor like levels (small blocked city ala GoW) or UT like MP maps are i think a completely different beast and you're better off with UE3 style CSG tools and a grid, imo.
doom 3 = best engine ever, nuff said.
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No you got it all wrong!!! TEH BEST ENGINE EVER IS:
SAUERBRATEN, JAWOHL!
Realtime, multiplayer mapediting FTW!
And it is a damn nice oldschool FPS, too.
However I think a lot of the technology it's using is fairly overrated, and mostly the only thing that looks interesting are their shadow maps, and that's pretty much standard DX10 stuff, I think. Certainly all the high-res screenshots you see floating around on the web, and their demo videos, are all running on ridiculously fast PCs and videocards you probably can't even buy yet.
I know that when it was demoed at a German game convention late last year, it was running on very high-end machines, and was generally quite slow and jerky, averaging 15fps. I assume they've streamlined it somewhat since then, but if you consider that the Unreal Engine currently runs everything very smoothly on existing hardware, and without a really huge difference in visuals, I'd probably go for UE3 at the moment.
Time will tell though.
About hardware, i got some feedback from inside that i'd run it fine, not on the best looking sittings but it would run kinda nice on my current system.
Correct me if I'm wrong but I've yet to see a UE3 game using that on vegetation.
AZ: while I think the lighting is better in the Crytek engine, you can still pull off a very nice outdoor scene using the U3 engine. Example:
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While that is a very nice looking scene, and while it is outdoors, it isn't really what I would call a wide open environment. I was speaking more about large, wide-open, mostly flat terrain. Those buildings are being used to occlude what may be behind them or possibly to give the illusion that there is something behind them when they may very well simply be facades that the player never gets close to.
It does look very nice and works well, though. In fact, I would say that it is a great example of the kind of thing Unreal is great for. What game is that from?
doom 3 = best engine ever, nuff said.
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Personally I still think Doom 3 is the best looking Next-Gen game released thus far . I don't know if it is the best engine but im willing to bet ID's new engine will blow them all away I just hope you guys don't become 3D realms ..I mean Carmack did say right after D3 was released that they would be showing off the new game shortly and well 2 years later ...lol
Quake Wars is teh new game...
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id isn't even developing it.
Carmack has claimed to be working on a new IP.
While that is a very nice looking scene, and while it is outdoors, it isn't really what I would call a wide open environment. I was speaking more about large, wide-open, mostly flat terrain. Those buildings are being used to occlude what may be behind them or possibly to give the illusion that there is something behind them when they may very well simply be facades that the player never gets close to.
It does look very nice and works well, though. In fact, I would say that it is a great example of the kind of thing Unreal is great for. What game is that from?
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Huxley, a FPSMMO on the U3 engine. I see what you're saying about the open lands though. I'm sure that programmers could come up with workarounds and illusions to make the U3 engine render beautiful landscapes, but just like Farcry, there seems to be no performance hit from looking at a building 10 feet in front of you and then turning around to see a whole row of islands.
I know a place developing a FPS at the moment using a great engine with superb lighting model, but the streaming they are getting is poor, since the engine was designed around portal based interiors.
Yes the cry engine can do citys and inside areas, its not just a island making engine. Its just that it can make islands very fast with less work than citys.
Their foliage stuff is really nice too but theres some pretty big open levels in UT and theres a comparable what you see is what you get / ability to use old shaders to make new ones and a similar set of features between both engines that people are mistakenly thinking is the domain of one side of the other.
I think the real difference between the engines, for those making games atm, is that Cry runs on vista and UE3 runs on 360,PS3,XP so choosing cry means you limit your target audience by a few million as people are going to be slow to pick up vista, as slow as they were with XP.
r.
In UE3, after everything is placed, you get to build lighting. You even have to rebuild the map to update the positions or cutouts you've made to BSP objects. It just seems like that stuff should happen on the fly, not after some sort of "build" process.
With that said... UE3 material editor, FTW:D
I'll learn any toolset
Although no rendering engine in the world is gonna make shit-tastic art look good, it's a balance of both the engine and the art quality.
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Quoted for truth. It is a balance. That said, imo If you're smart about what you do and how you use your resources, and depending on the type of game, it *is* possible to make a very good looking game with somewhat average tech, but it's *much* harder to make a very good looking game from very good tech but shitty art. Bethesda pulled off a graphically critically acclaimed game in Oblivion with Gamebryo, largely considered to be an average 3D engine (although its noteworthy that Oblivions performance is less than stellar).
When I was At EA we always managed to make good looking games, but we were always *way* behind the technology curve in terms of 3D engines. In a way, the poor tech dictacted the kind of games we could make. EA's action games like the Bond and MOH stuff ended up being these formulaic affairs that lead the player down a strictly pre-determined path, haunted house ride style. And I think that was partly due to the Hollywood folks coming into the co. but also I think that those are the only kind of games you can really make with a mediocre engine because of the smoke and mirror shit you can pull off. You just cant do more open world, ambitious stuff with a poor engine.
There is no 'best engine'. It's been said, but it depends on the kind of game you're making. Brushes, bsp, streaming, heightmapped terrain, there are all sorts of things that you might need an engine to be best at specific to your game. There really isn't a one size fits all yet.
Cryengine is looking amazing though. In game editing has to be the way forward. Baked in lighting really needs to just DIE a horrible death now as far as I'm concerned. If you can rip out the whole shadow map bake procedure and have that shit be truly dynamic, the saving in time and effort and ease of iteration is collosall. Plus of course you get dynamic night & day cycles for free. I wish I could show you guys the stuff we're working with but alas......
I think the real difference between the engines, for those making games atm, is that Cry runs on vista and UE3 runs on 360,PS3,XP so choosing cry means you limit your target audience by a few million as people are going to be slow to pick up vista, as slow as they were with XP.
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I am pretty sure that Crytech said they also have a XP compatible DX9 renderer for Crysis. They just don't pimp it as much since it looks not quite as good.
You are right about the consoles though, but as far as the actual game goes though, I would consider that a good thing.
gold words
If your meshes are high enough resolution and built in the right way, you can do your AO bakes on the vertices.
But furthermore, I hate no shadows within shadows as much as the next guy, and in fact If you look at past threads about Cryengine, I've pointed that stuff out. Cryengine doesn't appear to have any as far as I can see.
But, really, comparing engines gets hugely complex because there are so many factors at play. Many of these have already been mentioned. But they include:
- what style of gameplay are you going for
- platform compatibility
- tools quality
- your minimum spec (for PC)
- how much money you have to spend on the engine
- physics
- AI
- Character Animation
- Vehicle systems
- seamless world streaming
- network code (and server capabilities within)
- licensor support
- code clarity, commenting and documentation
- your team and their familiarity with certain tech
- how many programmers you have available to work on extending the engine
etc.
That's true doc. If you're developing a game that requires dynamic night & day cycles, it forces you to question the accepted norm of baking the crap into everything. You just can't do it, or not in the same way at least.
Also, the perception of fancy graphics in the eye of joe public is an interesting thing and you might not necessarily need everything in an engine that you think you do. People marvel at Oblivions exteriors and interiors, but if you actually look at it, other than a couple of cheap hacks for tree canopies and characters, there simply is *no* shadowing system at all in Oblivion.
Never did I say anything about 'realtime lighting owning all' though. Clearly in the looks and performance dept. baked lightmaps 'own'. I was saying that a worthy goal in lighting for the future would be to have everything dynamic.
I would have to disagree that vertex AO baking 'simply doesn't work'. It works to a degree. It worked just about fine for every building in Oblivion. But it isn't ever gonna look as good as AO textures true (assuming you can get decent resolution maps which is questionable in a large open world game). But anyway, I'm fine with baking AO as lightmaps. But shadowmaps are starting to feel dated and limiting to me, but again, it all depends on what type of game you're developing and I think we're looking at it from different perspectives. Baking shadow maps is fine for many, many kinds of games, but as doc says, start messing around seriously with daylight cycles and huge open world stuff, and it's a new set of problems.
Here are both tech demo's if you guys want to compare:
UE3 tech demo 2004 - http://www.gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=2509
Crysis GDC tech demo 2007 - http://www.gametrailers.com/umwatcher.php?id=9091
Both are awsome, I dont think people would have been so excited about UE3 if theyre tech demo was just bushes and water. The art in gears is definatley easier to impress with. But ofcourse UE3 will be on more platforms, used in more games and therefore accessable to more people. So like people said, "best" is a subjective term because a engine performs a number of functions, and what functions are important to each individual must determine their choice.
In theory you could store one ao map in each channel of a .dxt1 texture
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Asmuel, I'm not so sure you can rely on GDC tech demos for a realistic indication of an engines true abilities quite honestly. Whilst the Art is unquestionably amazing, clearly the technology in Gears Of War falls significantly short of that '04 UE3 video. Either the transition from pc to 360 lost some horsepower, or more likely the reality of actual game code running in the background and having to fit everything into memory meant some bells & whistles had to be cut. (and that's just an observation rather than a negative comment about UE3. It's obviously a very capable engine). But that's pretty much why I'll believe half that stuff in Cryengine only when I see it in a *shipped* product (I did see it at E3 but it ran like a vwcamper van and on god only knows what hardware).
Either the transition from pc to 360 lost some horsepower, or more likely the reality of actual game code running in the background and having to fit everything into memory meant some bells & whistles had to be cut. (and that's just an observation rather than a negative comment about UE3. It's obviously a very capable engine). But that's pretty much why I'll believe half that stuff in Cryengine only when I see it in a shipped product.
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and thats pretty much it right there. both companies are selling their engines commercially so it would be in their best interests to show everything that the engines *can* do than what they will ultimately will do at runtime on a target system.
I think it mainly comes down to the type of game you are making, how everything is coded, hardware it is running on if it's a pc based title, and how many souls were sold to get the game to run good.
I also sat in on the Crysis presentation at GDC and saw all the neat little things they were doing and how they did them. I have UE3 right now and it's been fun to play with and see what I can do with it. Guess I will make my decision when I get my hands on Crysis.
Anyone got a copy? lol
You know, ever since Half-Life 2 was released, some realistic looking games make me motion sick. I would have to go lay down for about 10 minutes every 30 minutes or so when I played through HL2. I also got motion sickness from playing Doom3, Prey, FEAR, and SIN episodes. Surprisingly, a ton of people at work got motion sickness from Gears of War, but I didn't. It seems to me that the motion blur/depth of field would make me nauseas for sure, along with the realistic foliage, etc.
Does anyone else experience this?
But the general marketing pitch from developers seems to be "Hey our engine uses dx10! We are hot shit and our graphics are better." which I've never really understood. So you're using a new driver specification with random new features, are you doing anything new with them?
Same goes for shader models. Companies claim to have Shader Model 3.0 (tm)(r)(c) support like it's a magical ring you put on your engine for +7 graphics. It's a language specification, it doesn't mean anything to the consumer unless you can say "I needed feature X to pull off realtime AO" and even so I'd be much more impressed with the AO than the random implementation details.