Favourite or most promising FPS Graphic Engine or just around the proverbial corner

hamster

With all the 3D FPS games out there now, what 3D Engine do you prefer or reckon has the bleedin' edge?

I rather still like the UnReal Engine. Ok, it depends on Glide but I sure like the way it deals with textures up close. Textured wall up close still look sharp and gives a nice textured bump map appearance. Likewise with those reflective floors.

The Dark Engine used in Thief, while fairly old now, perfectly recreates a dark gloomly alley or haunted tombs.

I rather liked the Quake3 Engine used in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Very good for up close level design. But it never really gave that epic feeling of great scale or height like in other Engine.

The heavily-modified Quake2 engine used in Half-life engine has served well but slowly is setting in the west with dignity...

KdjaCL

Quake 3 engine when used right is teh win


How to use it correctly MOHAA forgive minor mistakes as it was rushed.

How not to use it Spearhead foobed up a damn good game with rank bad mapping.


Refractor 3 engine looks great but i wish companies would use ID engines to the best of its abilities rather than using it cos they know it works.

I dont like UNreals engine as it will have serious problems when trying to draw a large outdoor arena but indoors its awesome for graphics and performance.


kdjac

Mutz

The Commanche engine used in Black hawk Down Demo looks pretty nice. Great shadow effects and detail when up close.

tman

whatever engine they're using for dredd vs death, looks tasteh

hamster

Is ID giving any information out on the render behind Doom3? I've seen a few shots of the game but I dare not try the damn thing yet as the rough alpha demo is rather harsh on the toughest of PCs...

BKtje

unreal engine depends on glide? First ive heard of it?

Unreal looks nice but is far too cartoony for my liking. ( ut2 engine)
Wish they'd stuck with the more realistic looking type of engine, like UT's.

doom3 engine looks very promising (at least the little ive seen of it). Only time will tell which will really be the best.

Shinji

There's loads of info on the DOOM3 renderer out there but its all very heavily techy - check Carmack's .plan files for the basics, and any number of analysis pieces on the E3 demo for more comprehensible discussions of the techniques he's using.

In terms of engines I like personally... Half-Life (originally modified Quake1 engine actually, but by the time it was released I don't think any Quake code remained in the game) remains the only engine that does gritty, vaguely realistic environments well. Quake3 is the "shiny things" engine, and Unreal Warfare - although visually stunning - is unproven so far in terms of realism (although Deus Ex 2 should change that).

Personally I think Dredd Vs Death's engine (developed in-house at Rebellion) looks like one of the most interesting ones on the horizon...

DiscoStu

Obviously Doom3 will the one that shall wipe the floor with the competition.

Soldier of Fortune 2 had pretty realistic environments and it used the q3 engine, abeit heavily modified.

America's Army uses the new Unreal engine and that is pretty damn realistic. also look at UT2k3, the karma physics engine bolted into it works wonders. imagine what that could do for real world physics modeling. Unreals ability to render wide open spaces should give it the edge against ids one which before have primarily focused on indoor settings and from the looks of doom3 will still be that way inclined. but the eye candy of doom3 is quite something.

Lithtecs new one? dunno much but i hated their earlier one used in(such smashes) as kiss psycho circus and global ops. both ran like dogs and looked roughter than a cheap ho's bikini line.

Matt Simis

Hmm... well the NDL Engine is very flexable and graphically impressive. It was used in Morrowind (it ran quite bad here), Bridge Commander and Freedom Force. 3 games with totally different looks and gameplay.


However, [IMO] without a doubt, the engine that looks the most impressive is the X-Ray engine, used in Stalker. It combines the huge maps of Flashpoint with better than Unreal Warfare GFX:

http://www.elited.net/interviews/2002/stalker.shtml

In particular, look at this pic:
http://www.elited.net/interviews/2002/Elited.jpg


Everytime I see it, that game reminds me of "28 Days Later". Gritty, dirty wrecks and buildings, mutanty freaks, pretty grass and flowers - its got it all!

You can download a rolling demo of an early version of the engine in action on their homepage.



Matt

Praetorian

Stalker

Stalker Oblivion lost looks fantastic. Its worth downloading the in game footage just to see the helicopter!

Hopefully it will play as nicely as VC / CS. Id love to see a CS mod based on this engine actually.

I dont like UNreals engine as it will have serious problems when trying to draw a large outdoor arena but indoors its awesome for graphics and performance.

You should check out Americas Army. It plays really nicely...feels right even indoor's, performance outside is fine even on my pc at work TNT2, the graphics are fine, it's quite realistic and you get to use an M16

Quigs Snr

I like the serious sam engine. I have seen that engine throw scores of beautifully detailed bad guys around screen at 1024*768 resolution, on a Celeron 433, 128MB SDRAM and Voodoo 3 3000. It's a pity no 3rd party folks have come on board and tried to put a proper game around it.

Praetorian

Originally posted by Quigs Snr
I like the serious sam engine. I have seen that engine throw scores of beautifully detailed bad guys around screen at 1024*768 resolution, on a Celeron 433, 128MB SDRAM and Voodoo 3 3000. It's a pity no 3rd party folks have come on board and tried to put a proper game around it.

Agreed. Its a fantastic engine also...

Its a pity nobody is going to make a really "Serious" game with it...lol

Retr0gamer

The new unreal engines look the most promising.
The Doom 3 engine looks pretty but it's not meant to handle outdoor bits very well and the amount of graphical detail will take up a lot of developers time. I wonder also if it can do more colours than gray and black.:D