Epic Pimps Unreal Engine 4, With Pictures

[News Portal]

Epic Games do more than just make Gears of War games - they also make one of the world's most popular game engines. They showed off a demo of Unreal Engine 4 to a bunch of select industry partners back in February, but now they've gone ahead and released a bunch of video stills to the public. Click on through to check them out.

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[exe3]

There is a lot of detail and impressive things in those screens but my issue is that it still looks like a game. Also they're throwing around things like dynamic lighting as if it's a new thing.

Will be interesting to see this in motion as well as actual games rather than just tech demos.

[André Axe'm]

So it looks like the next Disciples game is using the Unreal engine.

[Matty]

I'm not as impressed as I thought I'd be. Looks pretty though.

[Snootle]

eh looks alright but the texture on that broken pillar to the left seems pretty low-rez for an apparently next gen engine.

[realOne]

You can't expect RL quality from current hardware. We are still way off from that kind of True HD RL technology.

[BeeJNutter]

eh looks alright but the texture on that broken pillar to the left seems pretty low-rez for an apparently next gen engine

That looks like it's from depth of field blurring it up.

Some nice visuals, still not the same size step up going from UE3 to UE4 as it was from UE2 to UE3 but some of those shots are nice.

Now if only Epic would actually make a good game they'd be doing well.

[jellygoose]

Epic has seen the specs of proposed new consoles and is actively lobbying for them to be more powerful

[Zombywolf]

There is a lot of detail and impressive things in those screens but my issue is that it still looks like a game. Also they're throwing around things like dynamic lighting as if it's a new thing.

Will be interesting to see this in motion as well as actual games rather than just tech demos.

looks great to me, to be honest. sure, some textures could be a little sharper but meh...
i dont want my games to look 'like real life'. i want them to look like they suit the game they are a part of.

[xander_369]

i'am more excited about kismet 2 hopefully we wont need so many programmers for artistic parts of games anymore and they can spend more time working out Ui bugs Ai

[diamondd]

Epic has seen the specs of proposed new consoles and is actively lobbying for them to be more powerful

If this is truly the scenario I hope to see the console success we've seen recently wane and more devs to jump on board the business of melting PC's

EDIT:

but my issue is that it still looks like a game.

surely you can't be serious...

the special effects in half the movies currently being released still look like they're from a game. How much are you seriously expecting from something designed to render in real-time on consumer hardware?

[Shinanigans]

Also they're throwing around things like dynamic lighting as if it's a new thing.

It is for Unreal Engine

[diamondd]

^what's your affiliation with Crytek again? I'm sure there was something...

[wazzuppi]

Just finished arkham city and i guess thats unreal 3.5

Suprised no one mentions it - have searched on google. That the game looks eerily similar to the good samaritan tech demo even down to the drop fall move

Seeing as thats 3.5 and these screens are 4 it dosnt look at impressive..

[Instinx]

Well i can see evidence to argue for Ambient Occlusion (pretty obvious IMO, but again, this scene is not moving so the shadows could be baked? i think is the right term), Indirect Lighting (Although no moving light sources the area behind the column has light gradients from the orange glowing thingy) and Tessellation (the damaged pillar and possibly the character model, with the details on the face).
How much of that is a part of Unreal 3? They will probably also be adding volumetric fog and lighting hopefully, among other fancy lighting effects. Sure its no CryEngine, but its not meant to be. Unreal has always maintained a unique look which is evident in these screenshots. Its like even if you recreated the same scene in several engines, such as CryEngine, Unreal and IdTech you would be able to tell them apart by the way they each handle the scene.
The thing with todays engines is that a visually pleasing image is already easily capable, however the road to a realistic look and feel now likes in the ultimate of small details, of which there are different implementations to maintain a respectable framerate. Look at AA nowadays, we have FXAA, SMAA, SSAA, TXAA, AASLi, its going crazy!
My biggest hope in the upcoming engines is widespread adaptation of tessellation, i just think it has insurmountable potential