Unreal 3 Engine

[Darren Dirt]

 article from GDC: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/09/news_6120126.html

Epic is back at GDC this year showing the latest and newest features of the engine, along with whole new tech demos that can only be described as jaw-dropping.

The second demo showed off one of the newly-announced features of Unreal Engine 3--seamless level loading.

... after the initial load to start a game, players will not experience any level loading at all. To demonstrate this, Epic showed a futuristic dune buggy driving through the streets of what looks like a gritty European city. (If anything, it looked very much like a far more detailed version of Half-Life 2's City 17.) The buggy careened through the empty streets and then cut across a park, and it did so seamlessly. This means that in addition to no level loads, the game will be capable of creating huge, Grand Theft Auto-like worlds to explore. To finish the buggy demo <--(haha, "buggy demo", laugh devs everywhere) , the camera pulled back to reveal a glimpse of a stunning and crowded cityscape along with the glistening waters of a huge bay.

Epic showed an Unreal Engine 3 demo in which boulders rolled down a hill. In Unreal Tournament 2003, the engine could calculate and display about 10 boulders rolling down a hill at a time. Unreal Tournament 2004 increased that number to about 20. Both of those combined are nowhere close to the number of physical objects that Unreal Engine 3 can handle at the same time. To illustrate this, an avalanche of more than 600 boulders rolled down the hill, each reacting realistically to collisions and each casting its own shadow.

Epic Vice President Mark Rein expects the first Epic PC game based on the engine to ship sometime early next year. Epic also acknowledged that there are already several third-party projects underway using Unreal Engine 3, including at least one online role-playing game.

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As of right now, no video is available, but I am sure soon enough one of you web locusts will find a mention of it, so when you do post it in here (rather than in a new post)... The description above sounds intriguing that's for sure - the future of gaming is unexpectedly bright indeed!  B)

[Lazybones]

 No video but some of these screen shots I don't think I have seen before.
http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml

[Mr. Analog]

 And what is the min hardware spec for the new engine?

[Lazybones]

 

An even more pressing question is the kind of hardware you will require to run Unreal Engine 3 games. Next-generation consoles will have no problems with Unreal Engine 3 games, but PC gamers don't need to worry, according to Rein. He said that a video card based on an Nvidia 6600GT, the kind currently available for around $250, will be able to handle games based on the engine easily. However, by the time any games based on Unreal Engine 3 ship next year, those cards will have dropped in price considerably, meaning that PC gamers won't drop big bucks on upgrades

[Mr. Analog]

 Well then

[Darren Dirt]

 Yeah, what he said. Lazy beat me to it... I guess that means I'm lazier?