Unreal Engine 3.0 Demonstrated News
Chris Leyton
14/05/2004
The latest iteration of the Unreal Engine looks likely to provide more then a match to Valve's Source...
We previously brought you the first details on the Unreal Engine 3.0 at the beginning of the show and can now bring you screens of the engine in running, displaying a number of technical demonstrations used by Epic Games to demonstrate the strength of the engine.
Being the first game engine to feature Shader Model 3.0 support (enabled only by the nVidia GeForce 6 series) to allow for a host of visual effects including high dynamic-range lighting and FP16 blending, itās likely that Unreal Engine 3.0 will become the de-facto standard for first-person-shooter titles in 2005 and beyond.
Lighting is one particular area that has been vastly improved upon previous versions of the Unreal Engine, casting shadows that realistically blur as the light source moves away from the object in question.
In addition the Unreal Engine 3.0 introduces a new bump-mapping technique named Visual Displacement; which portrays the trick of seeing depth through protrusions from flat surfaces.
The engineās main strength appears to come from the power it grants level designers, with one particular example depicting a large outdoors arena, which we were told, is all dynamically created ā“ so for example, a hill that reaches a certain height will override the normal grass material with rocks, and snow when going higher still.
The Unreal Engine 3.0 is certainly looking impressive and should be more then a rival to Valveās Source Engine; but unfortunately it looks as though weāll have to wait awhile before seeing the first games to make use of the engine, with a rough timeline of late 2006 scheduled.
Weāll have more information soon.
