First Unreal Engine 4 Screenshots now available

[blastingcap]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...unreal-engine-4-with-stunning-in-game-screens

"There is a huge responsibility on the shoulders of our engine team and our studio to drag this industry into the next generation," said Gears of War design director Cliff Bleszinski. "It is up to Epic, and Tim Sweeney in particular, to motivate Sony and Microsoft not to phone in what these next consoles are going to be. It needs to be a quantum leap. They need to damn near render Avatar in real time, because I want it and gamers want it - even if they don't know they want it."

Sweeney added: "We're much more in sync with the console makers than any other developer is. That means we can give detailed recommendations with a complete understanding of what is going to be commercially possible."

Apparently Epic has seen the specs of the PS4 and next Xbox and is "actively lobbying" for them to be more powerful.

Epic will reveal Unreal Engine 4 to the public at the E3 trade show in June.

More in-depth interview about Unreal Engine 4 here, as found by RussianSensation: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/05/ff_unreal4/all/1

Older interview: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-03-13-an-epic-interview-with-tim-sweeney

 

[borisvodofsky]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...unreal-engine-4-with-stunning-in-game-screens

"There is a huge responsibility on the shoulders of our engine team and our studio to drag this industry into the next generation," said Gears of War design director Cliff Bleszinski. "It is up to Epic, and Tim Sweeney in particular, to motivate Sony and Microsoft not to phone in what these next consoles are going to be. It needs to be a quantum leap. They need to damn near render Avatar in real time, because I want it and gamers want it - even if they don't know they want it."

Sweeney added: "We're much more in sync with the console makers than any other developer is. That means we can give detailed recommendations with a complete understanding of what is going to be commercially possible."

Apparently Epic has seen the specs of the PS4 and next Xbox and is "actively lobbying" for them to be more powerful.

Epic will reveal Unreal Engine 4 to the public at the E3 trade show in June.

i wouldn't say all gamers want it. :'(

 

[Markbnj]

i wouldn't say all gamers want it. :'(

I would say I want it, if only so console hardware will stop gimping PC titles.

 

[destrekor]

I would say I want it, if only so console hardware will stop gimping PC titles.

I wouldn't doubt that next gen consoles will be less of a major leap forward than previous generations.
Neither Sony or Microsoft really wish to sell for massive losses and bear that burden. Shareholders for either company won't be as kind, as there is a shift in what demographics (and their desires) the console market is honing in on.
Worst, they are going to be even more of an integrated experience, trying to offer everything under the digital sun on your TV. They will want to keep it away from astronomical prices, and to avoid massive losses on hardware, they can't push crazy specs.

I'd love to be pleasantly surprised, but I'm not really expecting it.

It's either that, or we will be keeping this new forever-console approach, where the life of each release is drastically longer than previously.
Which might be a good thing, if lack of backward compatibility and a hit on the used game market is to occur as expected.
Or that could be even worse, since game libraries will be much larger with a wider generation gap. It might turn out to be a "keep multiple machines or go home" sort of thing.

The gaming market has really taken an interesting turn in the past decade. It's almost like an epic story that few would ever choose to read.

Not the next generation, but one or two after that (if global ISPs are ready), I honestly wouldn't doubt if consoles become "cloud-gaming" devices like has been ever so slowly growing in media coverage as of late. Dumb boxes with a fat pipe connected, at that point streaming minimal-latency graphically demanding games. Dedicated hardware may end up sort of a niche market.
It really all depends on ISPs being able to shoulder that burden, and not sure how long that will be at this rate.

 

[dougp]

Apparently Epic has seen the specs of the PS4 and next Xbox and is "actively lobbying" for them to be more powerful.

I sincerely doubt that Epic can convince both companies who have years upon years of research invested in those consoles to make any changes.

 

[weez82]

im sorry but it is nothing impressive. When are games going to start looking more realistic? Im kinda tired of all this fake looking, overly shinny when it shouldnt shine graphics.

 

[Fire&Blood]

I just don't see how a console, at launch, could perform better than a mid range GPU. Not without a significant price hike and not until MS and Sony manufacturer each component themselves, which is very unlikely. Both console prices will hover around a high end GPU and perform like a mid range one.

The screenshots show nothing revolutionary but AAA titles from Crytek and similar stuff may have more wow factor

 

[BD231]

As long as people pay top dollar for sh tty hardware we will continue to see this, lower your high end gpu price's for the console market AMD/nVidia! Bastards ...

 

[dagamer34]

I sincerely doubt that Epic can convince both companies who have years upon years of research invested in those consoles to make any changes.

Epic is the reason why the 360 has 512MB instead of 256MB of RAM because they lobbied so hard for it for Gears of War. They are probably one of the few developers they seriously listen to because of the number of games that rely on the Unreal Engine as the backbone of their games.

 

[Destiny]

Awesome... got my E3 badge ready!

 

[shortylickens]

Still waiting on Unreal 3.

 

[darkewaffle]

I feel like only a couple of those screenshots look particularly good. Also the ones with the fire and the horned/armored guy look straight out of a Diablo 3 cutscene lol.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

They've been lobbying for more power ever since their first real time DX11 demo was showed off on the PC as what could be possible.

Honestly it looks like AMD will be putting in video hardware which is pretty much middle of the road 7xxx generation hardware, except we're not going to see these consoles for at least another year, likely more. It will be grossly out of date by a whole generation by the time these consoles come to market.

Simple fact is that Epic abandoned the PC because the allure of the size and market power of the consoles was too great, but they're just not prepared to accept the inherent limitations with console hardware, which is to say that at its very peak (the day it's launched), it's pretty mediocre to begin with and just becomes more pathetic from then on.

If they want to sell a next gen engine that has to be done on the PC where having a next gen engine actually matters and can be put to some use.

 

[Tweak155]

Is that what gameplay will be like? I think it looks good.

 

[Stuka87]

im sorry but it is nothing impressive. When are games going to start looking more realistic? Im kinda tired of all this fake looking, overly shinny when it shouldnt shine graphics.

You are apparently unfamiliar with the term "Tech Demo".

The point is to show off what the engine can do, not to make it look awesome. And in tech demos screen shots rarely do it justice.

Whether something shines or not is up to the game dev. This engine will most likely be the most realistic looking engine in existence once released.

Although oddly enough, less than half of the features in UE3 were ever actually used in a game (Thank you consoles).

 

[Aikouka]

I saw a photo on Ars of this that really disappointed me. It showed some lava textured hammer on a floor, and I'm sure they wanted to show off the fancy lighting. For me, all they showed off was the poor ability to render a realistic looking floor! If you want to create more realistic games, why are you still making the floor a flat surface with average looking textures?

 

[Anarchist420]

If it's true that the Xbox720 is going to use embedded DRAM in the GPU, then I don't expect much from it because so much GPU die space would be wasted. IIRC in 2005 when MS said that the 10MB eDRAM in the Xbox360 would give "free AA". If they said that, then I don't know who they were trying to fool since such few Xbox360 games have AA and since AA can't be "free".

Anyway, if they're going to focus on 1080p for this coming generation, then they're going to need an S load of RAM or else the graphics will look even worse than they would without a ton of bandwidth. I don't see how consoles could be ready for every game to be in native 1080p without either a lot of RAM or without looking like crap (low back RGBA and depth buffer precision, no AA, etc.)

 

[Genx87]

All of that tessellation. I can see why they are lobbying for more powerful hardware in the next gen consoles given who is supplying the graphics for them.

 

[Stuka87]

All of that tessellation. I can see why they are lobbying for more powerful hardware in the next gen consoles given who is supplying the graphics for them.

Are you trying to say that AMD is not capable of providing hardware that will runt his? AMD didn't choose the hardware to supply to MS/Sony. MS/Sony said "We want a cheap graphics chip, what do you have?"

 

[dougp]

Epic is the reason why the 360 has 512MB instead of 256MB of RAM because they lobbied so hard for it for Gears of War. They are probably one of the few developers they seriously listen to because of the number of games that rely on the Unreal Engine as the backbone of their games.

Increasing RAM is nothing like changing out the processor or video card.

 

[Genx87]

Are you trying to say that AMD is not capable of providing hardware that will runt his? AMD didn't choose the hardware to supply to MS/Sony. MS/Sony said "We want a cheap graphics chip, what do you have?"

I can only guess that from the makers of this game engine petitoning the console makers they wont.

A cheap graphics chip is what they will get. Epic seems to believe it wont be powerful enough.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

If he's lobbying to MS and Sony then there is no doubt or question anymore for me that consoles are the cash cow for gaming studios. Obviously Sony and MS are holding Epic back. Seems Epic is ready and are not sure whether to go the demanding hardware route or crap i mean console route, which is well known as not being as powerful as their PC counter-parts. My hope is that they make an Unreal Tournament IV with UT99 like menus and UT3 game-play with some additional movement options/advancements. UT3 is badass as it is for Dueling, DM, CTF, iCTF, Greed, Warfare. Diablo what?

 

[weez82]

You are apparently unfamiliar with the term "Tech Demo".

The point is to show off what the engine can do, not to make it look awesome. And in tech demos screen shots rarely do it justice.

Whether something shines or not is up to the game dev. This engine will most likely be the most realistic looking engine in existence once released.

Although oddly enough, less than half of the features in UE3 were ever actually used in a game (Thank you consoles).

every big title released has shiny graphics. programmers will make games look just like this demo. not very impressive

 

[thespyder]

I just don't see how a console, at launch, could perform better than a mid range GPU. Not without a significant price hike and not until MS and Sony manufacturer each component themselves, which is very unlikely. Both console prices will hover around a high end GPU and perform like a mid range one.

The screenshots show nothing revolutionary but AAA titles from Crytek and similar stuff may have more wow factor

Microsoft knows how. They buy in bulk to bring the price down. Then they undercut their own price in the hopes of making a profit on the games. They have done it before. They were selling PCs at less than cost to get Windows out into the market place. It is a reasonable strategy.

 

[Phynaz]

every big title released has shiny graphics. programmers will make games look just like this demo. not very impressive

I have to ask, have you even bothered to read about the engine?