POLL: Which Graphics engine is the best?

[BenSkywalker]

Doom3 by miles over those listed in this thread. It can do everything all of the others offer and quite a bit more. I honestly don't think it is really fair to compare it to most of the others, they are mainly DX7/8 era engines with extremely limited capabilities that just happen to run fast(largely due to their very low requirements). MegaTexturing and the lighting engine in particular simply obliterate the others(QuakeWars should be our first hands on example of mega texturing). Unreal3 and Cry2 are the ones that should be compared to it- the rest are outdated.

Source was done years earlier- with better performance- under the 'LS3D' engine used in Mafia. Good artists making up for weak coding is what is happening there. All of the effects look like solid DX8 level ones so they blend together quite nicely, just in an outdated way.

FEAR suffers from extremely poor artists utilizing available resources horribly. A lot of what they do can be approximated for significantly less resources.

Unreal2 is a stellar engine- but it is now outdated. Great performance given what you get on screen- but the patchwork addition of so many features is starting to show. Unreal3 will put Epic back in the mix in a big way.

FarCry is really starting to show its' age too- particularly in modeling and animation where it looks horribly disjointed compared to the environmental effects it is pulling off. Obviously CryTek's next engine is a quantum leap over it.

Gamebryo would rank much higher for me if it weren't for the clipping issues. Seeing an occasional glitch in visuals is bad enough, but getting stuck due to bounding failures really is a major shortcoming- and unfortunately it is too common to be a forgiveable issue for me.

BF2 doesn't have very impressive visuals or performance overall. It isn't up to par with the others.

 

[Xyclone]

Source, because of the compatibility with the older machines.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: Xyclone
Source, because of the compatibility with the older machines.

aye...it looks great on everything

 

[VIAN]

I'd have to say, FarCry for it's excellent outdoor environments. Didn't look that bad at indoors as well. Has a few bugs, but still the most impressive. Battlefield 2 comes in 2nd, even though it has many things to optimize.

Doom3 engine has low poly stuff, plastic look, crappy textures and still hasn't had any outside levels bigger than indoor levels, so I don't know what it's capable of. Source just looks too plain to me, but with excellent textures and questionable HDR. FEAR uses up too much performance for it's eye candy. Unreal 2004 is old. I'm not familiar with Oblivions graphics first hand.

 

[JBT]

Source

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

Oblivion's Engine . . . scales very well.

The Oblivion engine is massively CPU limited.

but works pretty well on a 3.0Ghz P4 and any decent midrange videocard [x800 series+]. . .

. . . and i am not getting the 'clipping' BenSkywalker mentioned . . . i got "stuck" maybe three times in over 500 hours of play.

 

[Scouzer]

Source engine can't do vehicles worth a crap...

i voted battlefield just because it can do everything fairly well

 

[Ika]

Source engine scales excellently with weak systems.

 

[PingSpike]

Source, since it scales well and with the exception of the unreal engine it seems to do more in multiplayer then the others even attempt.

 

[SynthDude2001]

I voted for CryEngine...the game (FarCry) is more than two years old now and I've yet to see more breathtaking vast outdoor visuals. And I think most of the indoor stuff (lighting and the lab levels like someone else mentioned) looked good too. It's not as scalable as Source (though I do have friends who play FarCry on cards as old as Radeon 8500's/Geforce 3's), but it looks a lot better IMO.

 

[Powermoloch]

DOOM3 + Oblivion

Source ~ :thumbsdown:

 

[Topweasel]

Originally posted by: shortylickens

Originally posted by: gorcorps

Originally posted by: shortylickens
FEAR uses the latest version of the LithTech engine.
Made by Monolith and used in games like AvP 1 and 2, No one lives forever 2 (maybe 1), Tron 2.0 and Might & Magic 9.

Hmmmm, I thought they used their own engine. But I guess they just used their own physics engine then.

I thought they used the Havok for physics, but I could be wrong about that.
EDIT:
To answer the OP, I think the BEST is the one that has the most potential and works efficiently, so I pick Source.
So many folks say its substandard because the few games they've seen (HL2 and CS:S, which are really the same when you think about it) didnt utilize the same features as other games.
Source can do HDR, and faster.
Source can do Bump-Mapping and better.

Heck if you think about it, Doom3 was a rotton engine because without bump mapping everything looks like crap. But we dont KNOW that for sure because we havent seen anything new with that engine. (Again the two games based on it were basically the same.) Maybe it could look good without bump maps and maybe they can make some sweet outdoor levels with it. But we need a bunch more games for eahc of these engines before we judge them.

Actually, thats my official stance. We need more games before we can judge objectively.

Quake 3 must have had what, a dozen games using its engine?
Yeah, that fvcker was picked apart and analyzed by everybody and his brother.
Thats what I'm looking for.

P.S. Same for Far Cry/CryEngine. The technical specs cant even compare to the newer stuff, but the game itself was designed so well by people with genuine artistic talent that its still very visually appealing today.

Answers to everyones questions available here.

Fear was made by Monolith, just like Valve made HL2. Monolith has always used their own engines starting with and I know I am wrong but I believe it was a game called RoboTech always calling their engines the Lithium engine. Almost all game Physics (including HL2) use the Havok Physics engine. Its all about implimentation.

Which makes the car coments and stuff false as well, its just Valve people and Sin people and Id people for that matter don't do any kind of car games and the idea of designing a car in game is a mystery to them. Don't blame the engine blame the designers.

The fact is the level of detail that the Source engine can display at riculously low settings is amazing. It is by far the most flexible engine, the fact that everything is Modular and in combination with Steam makes the Valve as distributor option much much more friendly. The Fact that even with games like Sin EP1 you don't need to download all the shared files every time is a bonus.

Steam for the win, next would be Lithium (unknown Ver), Oblivion, Doom3, Crytek, Unreal 2. I don't really understand the love afair with the Crytek engine, It does sky and water really well but the caracters, and weapons, and buildings are sub par, even the folliage close up doesn't look that good. It seems to me that the pixel count close up and far away are roughly the same, so its kind great from afar but far from great kind of things.

 

[SonicIce]

I think UT2004 is the easiet to make content for. I like the engine how you "subtract" everything from a solid world.

 

[DanTMWTMP]

UT2K4 and the Source engines are the best. They both run really really well, and look really good doing it. I couldn't believe it was the UT engine while playing Splinter cell at awesome framerates. That engine can look awesomely cartoony to crazy realistic. It's very versaitile and and efficient. Source engine is the only engine that does HDR right. I've seen "HDR" in other games, and it looks like utter crap. HDR in Guild Wars is CRAP. HDR in Lineage 2 is CRAP. HDRwannabe thing in FarCry was friggin crap as hell. Everything is just blurred to hell, that it gave me a headache.

I'm like the only person who hates HDR. The only 2 games that I've seen HDR actually look good, and not overwhelm me with stupid blurriness and random brightnesses is HL2 and Day of Defeat (DoD:S is probably the BEST USAGE of HDR in any game, period).


Both source and UT2k4 engines are highly scalable, and still look great when scaled down.

In my total honest opinion, I think Far Cry's graphics is overrated. But that's just my opinion. The game looks too fuzzy and waaay too colorful for my tastes. UT2k4 engine can do great outdoors (Lineage2, UT2K4 onslaught maps).


The gamebryo engine looks great, but it demands too much hardware for the visuals. Source engine overall looks better than that. The game has too many details. I think shadows, lighting effects, and sharpness is FAR more important than attention to modelling details. Just having accurate lighting/shadow effects makes the environment far more realistic and pretty looking than what Oblivion shows. Oh, and oblivion has some stupid wannabeHDR crap that makes me want to puke from motion sickness. There should be a law that only the Source engine is allowed to have anything remotely close to "HDR."

Doom3 is impressive due to the lighting effects, and just due to that looks worlds better than the gamebryo engine.

BF2's engine? ehh...BUGGY. pass. it's nice w/ the shadows, lighting effects, and outdoor environments; but that's all it has going for it.

The best efficient usage of hardware to gain great visuals/performance has to be the UT2k4 engine followed VERY CLOSELY by the Source engine

 

[Trevelyan]

Originally posted by: DanTMWTMP
UT2K4 and the Source engines are the best. They both run really really well, and look really good doing it. I couldn't believe it was the UT engine while playing Splinter cell at awesome framerates. That engine can look awesomely cartoony to crazy realistic. It's very versaitile and and efficient. Source engine is the only engine that does HDR right. I've seen "HDR" in other games, and it looks like utter crap. HDR in Guild Wars is CRAP. HDR in Lineage 2 is CRAP. HDRwannabe thing in FarCry was friggin crap as hell. Everything is just blurred to hell, that it gave me a headache.

I'm like the only person who hates HDR. The only 2 games that I've seen HDR actually look good, and not overwhelm me with stupid blurriness and random brightnesses is HL2 and Day of Defeat (DoD:S is probably the BEST USAGE of HDR in any game, period).


Both source and UT2k4 engines are highly scalable, and still look great when scaled down.

In my total honest opinion, I think Far Cry's graphics is overrated. But that's just my opinion. The game looks too fuzzy and waaay too colorful for my tastes. UT2k4 engine can do great outdoors (Lineage2, UT2K4 onslaught maps).


The gamebryo engine looks great, but it demands too much hardware for the visuals. Source engine overall looks better than that. The game has too many details. I think shadows, lighting effects, and sharpness is FAR more important than attention to modelling details. Just having accurate lighting/shadow effects makes the environment far more realistic and pretty looking than what Oblivion shows. Oh, and oblivion has some stupid wannabeHDR crap that makes me want to puke from motion sickness. There should be a law that only the Source engine is allowed to have anything remotely close to "HDR."

Doom3 is impressive due to the lighting effects, and just due to that looks worlds better than the gamebryo engine.

BF2's engine? ehh...BUGGY. pass. it's nice w/ the shadows, lighting effects, and outdoor environments; but that's all it has going for it.

The best efficient usage of hardware to gain great visuals/performance has to be the UT2k4 engine followed VERY CLOSELY by the Source engine

I pretty much agree with everything.

Source and UT2k4 engine are both extremely scalable. It's quality programming. Plus, I think Lost Coat looked freakin fantastic, and that was a big outdoor level.

 

[BFG10K]

but works pretty well on a 3.0Ghz P4 and any decent midrange videocard [x800 series+].

Well is a debatable term.

Now granted in an RPG like Oblivion framerate might not be as important as a FPS but the point is Source scales far better.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: BFG10K

but works pretty well on a 3.0Ghz P4 and any decent midrange videocard [x800 series+].

Well is a debatable term.

Now granted in an RPG like Oblivion framerate might not be as important as a FPS but the point is Source scales far better.

of course. Source scales much better . . . no argument from me there . . but Source looks crappy compared to Oblivion . . . i don't think you can really compare their visuals anymore .

 

[BenSkywalker]

but the point is Source scales far better.

So you think GLQuake is a lot better then Source I assume?

 

[0roo0roo]

i don't really think scaling down to the low end makes an engine best. its what it puts out at the top end that matters. low end compatiblity is just a bonus that maybe good for business.

 

[BFG10K]

but Source looks crappy compared to Oblivion . . . i don't think you can really compare their visuals anymore .

You could make the comparison to Lost Coast which has a very fast HDR implementation and some very rich textures.

Also maximum visuals are just one metric of an engine. The other major ones are scalability and the performance/IQ ratio it generates.

Oblivion has large CPU bottleneck because it pre-processes many scene elements that are never rendered. This is wasteful and inefficient.

So you think GLQuake is a lot better then Source I assume?

The initial GLQuake actually scales very poorly, especially when you factor in its dated visuals.

The original Half-Life has vastly better visuals and it runs faster at the same time.

A better example of scalability from the GLQuake family would be Tenebrae which generates Doom 3-esque visuals and still runs quite well.

 

[potato28]

Source. It runs really good on anything.

 

[Gooberlx2]

What about the SSII engine? All things considered, that game runs well, even on older hardware and manages to look great (or atleast the demo did).

My vote would go to source though.

 

[BenSkywalker]

The initial GLQuake actually scales very poorly, especially when you factor in its dated visuals.

The original Half-Life has vastly better visuals and it runs faster at the same time.

You know the original HL was built on the original Quake engine, right? It benefited from a couple of extra years in progress, but it is built around the Quake engine(GLQuake for the OGL renderer). It wasn't outdated the day it came out either as Source was(with FarCry already besting it and by the time they managed to hack job some relatively recent features in a lot of other games besting it too).

 

[Davegod]

IMHO, what's been done with Enemy Territory: Quake Wars proves how redundant the thread is. The "best" graphics engine is the one that can be made to best suit the developer's needs. The idea of a game with huge maps in outdoor environments being made on the DOOM3 engine would have brought guffaws before the MegaTexture hype, but it's totally turned the tables on the pros and cons for that engine. What's to say similar levels of enhancement can't be made to the other engines?

 

[BenSkywalker]

The idea of a game with huge maps in outdoor environments being made on the DOOM3 engine would have brought guffaws before the MegaTexture hype, but it's totally turned the tables on the pros and cons for that engine.

No, actually it was well known to anyone who paid attention that the D3 engine was very capable of handling large outdoor environments with ease long before the MegaTextuing feature was talked about.

What's to say similar levels of enhancement can't be made to the other engines?

That is part of the discussion being had right now. Some engines do not hold up well to having new features added- be it due to performance reasons(FEAR) or due to creating a disjointed environment(Crytek).