CryENGINE 3 ready for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360

When Crytek, developers of Crysis, said they wanted to move into console development, they weren't kidding. The team announced their brand new graphics engine today, one that works on DirectX 9/10, PS3 and Xbox 360. The engine's scalability will allow developers to work on a variety of genres, such as action games and MMOs; however, in addition to focusing on the now, Crytek is touting their new engine is the only one designed for the next generation of gaming.

Carl Jones, director of business development, refuses to be humble about this announcement. "CryENGINE 3 will set the benchmark for complete game engine solutions in performance, and services to game engine licensees and their players," he touts. "We've been preparing a long time for CryENGINE on consoles and we're confident that Crytek will again amaze developers at GDC."

The business team will be available at GDC later this month to discuss licensing details. In addition, Crytek will undoubtedly showcase the new tech during public presentations at the show. We're interested in seeing if the new CryENGINE will be able to come close to replicating Crysis' incredible visuals on today's home consoles.

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/11/cryengine-3-ready-for-pc-ps3-and-xbox-360/

I'm excited to see what this can do as a scalable engine.

Well, with id readying their next iteration of idTech in the form of RAGE, with Unreal3 currently an unstoppable force in game engine tech and now this announcement from Crytek one has to wonder why any developer bothers with proprietary engines any more. Surely it must be a whole lot cheaper to just buy an engine such as one of the above 'off the shelf' and develop a few bespoke plugins where needed?

It will be interesting to see who emerges - if any - to challenge Epic's domination of third-party game-engine licensing (which is what this is all about = big bucks).

Something Fishy

Brerlappins little hat wrote:Should be interesting to see what its capable of, tho the fact that even the best console games still don't look as good as Crysis (cryengine 2) so i dont know what cryengine 3 is gonna do for consoles. I guess PC will get the best visuals out of it as usual and a toned down version for consoles

Nothing comes close to Crysis and nothing will on consoles. I dread to think how much this engine will melt my poor PC's GPU.

Something Fishy

Brerlappins little hat wrote:
Something Fishy wrote:
Brerlappins little hat wrote:Should be interesting to see what its capable of, tho the fact that even the best console games still don't look as good as Crysis (cryengine 2) so i dont know what cryengine 3 is gonna do for consoles. I guess PC will get the best visuals out of it as usual and a toned down version for consoles

Nothing comes close to Crysis and nothing will on consoles. I dread to think how much this engine will melt my poor PC's GPU.

I know, my HD4870 & 4GB ram Quad core cpu PC can still can only run crysis in a playable framerate on high settings, very high settings and it drops considerably, and you can ******* forget about turning on AA

Same for me. :lol:

A new engine will kill it.

So, is CryENGINE 3 a toned down version of CryENGINE2? Also, if the engine is only just finished, when the bloody hell are we going to get the games?

After buying Free Radical, Crytek probably wanted a more versatile engine so that they could get a foothold on all three platforms without too much hassle, I assume that Free Radical will be there to help with that process and delve in to these new genres for them.

Drunken_Master wrote:So, is CryENGINE 3 a toned down version of CryENGINE2? Also, if the engine is only just finished, when the bloody hell are we going to get the games?

Yes.

$ilva $hadow wrote:
Drunken_Master wrote:So, is CryENGINE 3 a toned down version of CryENGINE2? Also, if the engine is only just finished, when the bloody hell are we going to get the games?

Yes.

Probably heavily optimised as well though. Seeing as how, the hardware is fixed and they only really have to consider a single resolution.

Crysis in 720p looks fantastic, BUT it still loses a lot of the detail and the scope that makes it look epic. Cryengine 3 will look good for a console engine but won't be able to reach the scope, scale and detail of Cryengine 2 for the PC. Expect to see lots of doctored/photoshopped images making Cryengine 3 look like a beast. Also expect to see images that are not 720p but in fact at much higher resolutions claiming that this is what Cryengine 3 looks like. In motion it won't look nearly as impressive at the pictures released.

Remember when Bungie were releasing images saying it was all in the game engine? It was true but they mislead everyone by photoshopping the picture, having a lot of post processed effects added on and gave pictures at a much higher resolution with higher resolution textures. The real game looked nothing like the pictures before release.

One are where Cryengine 3 will be heavily 'optimised' in is the physics.

Cal wrote:Well, with id readying their next iteration of idTech in the form of RAGE, with Unreal3 currently an unstoppable force in game engine tech and now this announcement from Crytek one has to wonder why any developer bothers with proprietary engines any more. Surely it must be a whole lot cheaper to just buy an engine such as one of the above 'off the shelf' and develop a few bespoke plugins where needed?

Given all the problems with Unreal 3's performance for most devs other than Epic themselves, I can see why they'd rather create their own.

$ilva $hadow wrote:Crysis in 720p looks fantastic, BUT it still loses a lot of the detail and the scope that makes it look epic. Cryengine 3 will look good for a console engine but won't be able to reach the scope, scale and detail of Cryengine 2 for the PC. Expect to see lots of doctored/photoshopped images making Cryengine 3 look like a beast. Also expect to see images that are not 720p but in fact at much higher resolutions claiming that this is what Cryengine 3 looks like. In motion it won't look nearly as impressive at the pictures released.

Remember when Bungie were releasing images saying it was all in the game engine? It was true but they mislead everyone by photoshopping the picture, having a lot of post processed effects added on and gave pictures at a much higher resolution with higher resolution textures. The real game looked nothing like the pictures before release.

One are where Cryengine 3 will be heavily 'optimised' in is the physics.

Agreed. However, visually I fully expect games released on it to blow the competition out of the water.

Obviously the console versions will look inferior, they only have 512/522mb of total ram.

You try running anything on a PC with 512mb of Ram.

Rik wrote:Obviously the console versions will look inferior, they only have 512/522mb of total ram.

You try running anything on a PC with 512mb of Ram.

However, the consoles don't have to run an operating system. And they have uniform hardware.

I'm not expecting the competition to be blown away at all. Killzone 2 looked mighty impressive in motion when it was played in slow motion gifs, but even I don't think it looks like it can't be done on the 360. Very low resolution textures but better lighting. Everything is smeared in vaseline. Gears of War 2 has poorer lighting but everything is much more immediate, higher resolution everything and higher poly counts all over the place. Far Cry 2 looks alright, nice scope, but everything is just so crowded in the jungle and out of the jungle it's not as impressive.

There's not been anything that's really taken a leap forward in the graphics and game engine department. I expect the size of the step Cryengine 3 will take at most will be the difference between Mass Effect Unreal Engine and Gears of War Unreal Engine. I really can't see how Cryengine 3 can do anything more when the current hardware either caters for a higher resolution with cutbacks everywhere else, or a drop in resolution but more onscreen enemies, better lighting and larger levels.

Last edited by Rik on Thu Mar 12, 2009 3:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Drunken_Master wrote:
Rik wrote:Obviously the console versions will look inferior, they only have 512/522mb of total ram.

You try running anything on a PC with 512mb of Ram.

However, the consoles don't have to run an operating system. And they have uniform hardware.

Have 1gb then.

Also Killzone 2 has 4xQAA whilst Gears 2 has no AA.

Rik wrote:
Drunken_Master wrote:
Rik wrote:Obviously the console versions will look inferior, they only have 512/522mb of total ram.

You try running anything on a PC with 512mb of Ram.

However, the consoles don't have to run an operating system. And they have uniform hardware.

Have 1gb then.

Games for PCs are highly unoptimised compared to console counterparts.

Rik wrote:Also Killzone 2 has 4xQAA whilst Gears 2 has no AA.

Come again?

The point is that you can't expect console versions to look as good and I doubt any console owners would expect them too, so all this PC versions will be superior is actually really strawberry floating obvious.

Rik wrote:The point is that you can't expect console versions to look as good and I doubt any console owners would expect them too, so all this PC versions will be superior is actually really strawberry floating obvious.

No one is saying they will look as good as the High-spec PC versions configured with their highest settings, however, I do think the 360 will be comparable to mid-range PC version. Despite the disparity in hardware.

Something Fishy

Rik wrote:
Drunken_Master wrote:
Rik wrote:Obviously the console versions will look inferior, they only have 512/522mb of total ram.

You try running anything on a PC with 512mb of Ram.

However, the consoles don't have to run an operating system. And they have uniform hardware.

Have 1gb then.

Also Killzone 2 has 4xQAA whilst Gears 2 has no AA.

Interesting what they said about that, thatit drops the AA when stressed. Clever because it means you'd never notice that when the game has gone batshit mental.

CryENGINE 3 ready for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360

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