New Crysis 2 Demo Video

[TechBoyJK]

As expected, Crytek has unveiled a new technology demonstration video at the San Francisco Game Developers Conference 2010. This 2-minute trailer presents several gameplay scenes (the first ever!) from Crysis 2 showing off various CryEngine 3 real-time capabilites on both the PC and the consoles: Dynamic Time of Day, Deferred Lighting, Colour Grading, Blend Shading, Procedural Destruction, Integrated Physics, Procedural Deformation, Dynamic Cover System, Hit Reactions, LiveCreate and Facial Animation.

An off-screen version of the trailer is linked below.

http://pc.gamespy.com/dor/objects/14354294/crysis-2/videos/cryengine3_trl_offscreen.html?show=hi

 

[TechBoyJK]

Only one clip is PC, and that is the 2nd clip. It's the nighttime city shot showing 'deferred lighting'. Man, that clip looks rich.

Console shots are impressive. Which I could see then in HD though. The way AI goes for cover and takes hits is pretty nice. It's good to see that Crytek is leaning towards gameplay more.

 

[2dt Drifter]

Dang, need more PC! Very impressive for consoles though

 

[Atreus21]

Something I've never understood about games for consoles and PC's, like this:

How are graphics settings resolved? it seems to me that since all consoles have the same specs (one 360 is the same as another), that there is only one graphics setting. But suppose a PS3 has more robust hardware. Would it look better on that? Further, would a maxed out PC's graphics on the same game look superior?

I suppose the developers analyze what a console is capable of and set the graphics accordingly. But do consoles ever hang up on graphics, like a PC would if its GPU were underpowered to the task?

 

[soccerballtux]

Something I've never understood about games for consoles and PC's, like this:

How are graphics settings resolved? it seems to me that since all consoles have the same specs (one 360 is the same as another), that there is only one graphics setting. But suppose a PS3 has more robust hardware. Would it look better on that? Further, would a maxed out PC's graphics on the same game look superior?

I suppose the developers analyze what a console is capable of and set the graphics accordingly. But do consoles ever hang up on graphics, like a PC would if its GPU were underpowered to the task?

It depends on the developer, really. Crap developers like EA, for example, usually build the game for the lowest common denominator*, and if a console has 60% of the market, they'll spend most of their time tweaking that version. For example, the gamecube version of Fifa 2002 and 2003 suffered from stuttering...significant changes in the gamespeed and framerate. Whereas, the PS2 and Xbox versions were butter smooth.

The goal with their new Sandbox engine is they can create whatever level of complexity they want, and then the compiler or game uses a profile for the target hardware and builds the game world within those bandwidth and processing requirements. If I recall, SquareEnix is doing the same with their next Final Fantasy (since it's going to be on both Xbox and PS3).

*lately it seems like it's becoming easier for them to just crank the graphical settings up a notch or two-- just tell their dev tool to build a 3000 poly model instead of 2000, for example. However for things like AI, that is probably a common denominator (aside from the scale-- ie perhaps the PS3 or Xbox360 could handle more AI decisions/second because of the hardware [my bet would be Xbox360, the SPE's in the Cell processor absolutely fail at branch-heavy code, which AI is], but the core AI logic is going to be the same. It is therefor conceivable in such a scenario that a console like the PS3 (with only one "real" processing unit, and at that a crippled in-order one only [think Atom processor at 3.2ghz but without the hyperthreading ability]) could limit the developers in the complexity of AI they build, forcing them to cater to the lowest common denominator.

In reality, nobody seems to really care about AI, and if you make it too good, people get frustrated that it thinks faster and better than you can. So I'd say any limitations would come from resource constrained studios that are deadline-pressed that just pump out the same product for all three consoles.