We tend to work on several types of simulator technology at once. Some of the simulators we work with use it, so VBS 2 is a nice breath of fresh air compared to some of the older systems we're accustomed to.
If the design is iterative, the best bet is to use a blockout system. Artists don't beautify the level until Design has worked out the kinks in the gameplay. Best workflow for all kinds of time-intensive art taskery.
Pivotal tracker is great, its pretty visual allows for points and for velocity scheduling and is very similar to treelo that anyone can just kinda jump into it. The team I work with at beachfront games uses this system exclusively
In Unreal you would use the Cascade Particle system https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/ParticleSystems/index.html You would need to make textures in photoshop but most of the work would be done in unreal.
If you have a terrain mesh, usually it's under all the other meshes. The errors you see above are probably from using a multi-tile terrain system, but doing a terrible job with the seams between them.
Stage 2 roughed out. And I have a cold. Again. Obviously have a rather weak immune system when it comes to American strains (Or I have to quit licking lamp posts, one or the other).
When two high end GPU's perform at nearly the exact same level, it's usually due to a bottleneck in the system elsewhere. Possibly the CPU, RAM, or something. I have a feeling that there's something holding the GPU's back.
Referring to game design will cause some confusion, Game Design is it's own discipline that involves the design of game play, systems, etc... You could say there are 3 pillars to game development: Art, Code & Design.
It could be bad, because whoever managed to get into Ubisoft's system is likely still capable of operating within it. Like the previous poster said - the fact that everything is doen except the password change page is very suspicious.
I have gSkill memory and it has been absolutely faultless for the last 4years of owning it. About to build a new system and definately getting 12Gb... thoroughly tempted to go all in and get 24Gb though :p