by Beakman » 26 Apr 2009 17:58
Hello to everyone on this forum.
I'd like to see an HD version of that video. As icycalm stated, it only looks marginally better, but the low definition doesn't help to discern the differences, if any.
CryEngine 2 itself went through various iterations in retail products. The one that came with Crysis lost roughly 10 fps if it ran on Vista instead of on XP with the "DX10" effects unlocked (which could be done by editing some .ini file or something, although a couple of shaders still looked a bit different under DX10, there was no noticeable upgrade in quality under DX10 after the modification). I have a 8800 GTX, 2 GB DDR2 RAM at 800 MHz and a Core 2 Duo E6400 overclocked to 3.2 GHz. It ran at around 25 fps, but I had to lower the resolution to 1280x720. I tried to run it at 1920x1080 and it was not playable at all. And that was without AF or AA in both cases.
In Crysis' expansion, Warhead, CryEngine 2 was a lot more optimized. I haven't tried it on my TV, but on a 1280x1024 monitor it runs much better, around 40 or 50 fps with exactly the same setup of course, and now it doesn't need modification in any file to show every effect under XP. Some textures are also a little bit more detailed than in Crysis and my system is nowhere near as powerful as the one ChaosAngelZero mentioned. Still, according to hardware review sites, it doesn't scale well with multiple video card setups.
Those guys at Crytek know their optimization. I imagine that CryEngine 3 is more of a port of the second version than a full-blown engine but, if it runs well on a 360 or PS3, a decent PC now should run circles round it. Still, it'll be worth to check out what other features have been added (an easier to use SDK, new physics shit or something?)
I hope too that this one gets a decent slice of the game engine market. Unreal engine has been monopolizing third-party engines and the only games running on UE3 that don't look/run like shit are the ones from Epic themselves.