The FC3 engine is a stuttering mess. Crysis 1 is better.Heck, in many ways FarCry 2 had the better engine and looking game.
My experience with Far Cry 3 was smooth. FC2 and FC3 used same engine btw. If anything, it's simply more efficient and advanced. (the studio may have not taken advantage of that though). I actually really like where UbiSoft took CryEngine after they forked it when they split with Crytek.
There's a really difference between the game, and the engine. There's all kinds of awesome effects, sub routines, etc. that are in CryEngine3 that even Crysis 3 didn't use. It's like having a palette of resources and the studio chooses what it needs in the game, and balances what they use according to the resources available on the host system. So it often depends on the studio. They could have just as easily made Far Cry 3 in CryEngine 3 and still used the same height map for the island, the same tree textures and objects, assets, etc.
Also, don't forget Crytek's CryEngine3 is often used for simulations, including military simulations and flight simulations. UbiSoft doesn't dabble in that, so their fork of CryEngine1 was pushed towards gameplay stuff. They haven't made the same graphical steps forward as Crytek did. Crytek has an interest in making things as real as possible. Ubisoft doesn't.
At the end of the day, if I owned a studio, was developing a game for Occulus Rift (where immersion is part of the game), I'd choose CryEngine3 because I think CE3 has more features that add to overall 'realistic' immersion. Everything from shadows to physics to how the screen blurs when you focus on objects, etc. is going to feel 'more real'. (noted in post above, someone mentiond far cry 3 looks great but is more cartoony).
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