Unreal 4 Engine Tech Demo. Amazing.

[NeoTesseract]

Unreal 4 Engine tech demonstration, I personally thought that this demonstration was vastly superior in terms of initial impressions to that of the new Square Enix engine.

Simply amazing real-time effects and true interaction demonstration. Superb stuff.


[video]http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/06/08/unreal-4-engine-development-demo[/video]

 

[AuronX]

In terms of technical prowess, I love Unreal Engine. The code is very straightforward, clean, efficient, and capable. However, in comparison to the recent demo from SE (and other 'next-gen' demos we've seen over the past couple years), Unreal Engine is really starting to feel like it's falling behind in terms of graphical quality. It's not bad by any means, but UE used to be standard-setting for graphics. Each new engine that came along blew my mind. Sadly, it seems to have kind of gotten stuck in a rut recently. Despite all the updates, it still looks the same to me. Granted, I have a decent grasp around how the engine works, so I can visually dissect it in my head and figure out the gist of how everything is done, which may make it seem less impressive to me than something I can't figure out for the life of me, but I honestly have to say that a lot of other engines look better than Unreal Engine these days.

 

[Richard B Riddick]

It looks good.

The thing with next generation engines that've been demo'ed is they have a clear advantage in achieving a higher standard of photorealism. There are times someone might question if what they're seeing was real. With the unreal engine demo, you can always tell its a game.

There are also some differences in terms of difficulty. The final fantasy demo contained a lot of hair, human faces and fur. AFAIK, those are three of the most difficult things for an engine to render realistically in real time. The unreal demo rendering suits of armor and scenic backgrounds is much easier than rendering a persons face or a furry animal like a hyena.

Then again, there's also a question of scale. The star ocean-esque demo Ohri-Jin posted in the other thread contained a single room and another scene where two characters were watching a launch. The final fantasy demo contained a village & what looked like an entire world. It may well be much easier to focus on texturing & lighting a single room, two character and a backdrop than it is an entire village, a few hairy hyenas, etc. There may be differing degrees of difficulty involved.

I would say the final fantasy demo was the most impressive, thus far. It looks about as good as the final fantasy spirits within & advent children movies. Except, its not a movie, its in real time and a game that you can play(?).

But, it is difficult to accurately say which was the best unless we have an idea of how many people worked on each demo, how much time they invested and other variables.

/Blah, blah.