UT3, Gears of War 1 and 2 were all UE3 but it's an engine that's constantly being updated and the last publicly available version was the one with UT3 so this has a lot of new features not in UT3's build of the engine. You can also use this version of the engine to release your own standalone game that doesn't require UT3…
Yes what the comparision showed me is that on one of them theres sharp direct sun lighting and on the other there's just a very soft/ambient one. How much does that have to do with engine version though? Maybe the quality of lightmaps but i dont really think the general lighting has anything to do with the new engine build.
From http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitBuildUpgradeNotes.html#October 2009 "Major changes to the engine since the release of Unreal Tournament 3"
Anyone else having issues with this engine version being a total crash fest? Right now it's worst than the "customized" (ie. we fucked it up,removed a few things..have fun) version we used to get from clients. I've mainly been using the material editor so far, but it crashes at random. Example just connecting a node might…