The next Unreal engine...

A good interview with Tim Sweeney on the development of the future
Unreal 3 engine:

http://www.beyond3d.com/interviews/sweeney04/


He says "...we're going to make a game that brings today's GeForce
FX's and Radeon 9700+'s to their knees at 640x480! :-) We are
targetting next-generation consoles and the kinds of PC's that will be
typical on the market in 2006, and today's high end graphics cards are
going to be somewhat low end then, similar to a GeForce4MX or a Radeon
7500 for today's games".

I also like the part where he says he wishes the Intel integrated
graphics chip would just "go away."

I'm sorry, but what is the benefit of excluding a market of consumers with
average video cards?

How about an engine that runs great and looks beautiful on a large range of
systems? I'm all for progress and a more cinematic look, but Joe Consumer
shouldn't have to upgrade his computer every six months and stay on top of
hardware issues just because he wants to play the latest game release.

This is why people settle for consoles.

- f_f



"John" wrote in message
om...
A good interview with Tim Sweeney on the development of the future
Unreal 3 engine:

http://www.beyond3d.com/interviews/sweeney04/


He says "...we're going to make a game that brings today's GeForce
FX's and Radeon 9700+'s to their knees at 640x480! :-) We are
targetting next-generation consoles and the kinds of PC's that will be
typical on the market in 2006, and today's high end graphics cards are
going to be somewhat low end then, similar to a GeForce4MX or a Radeon
7500 for today's games".

I also like the part where he says he wishes the Intel integrated
graphics chip would just "go away."

In alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati faster_framerates wrote:
I'm sorry, but what is the benefit of excluding a market of consumers
with average video cards?

They are targeting average video cards, it's just that they're targeting
the average cards of 2006. It will be closer to 2006 when the engine is
finished, and targeting even high-end cards of 2003 in a project that
starts in 2004 is just a waste of time and money. A 24-month upgrade
cycle is not completely unreasonable for videogames.

This is why people settle for consoles.

I take issue with the "settle", but that's another argument for another
time.

-a

wrote in message
...
In alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati faster_framerates
wrote:
I'm sorry, but what is the benefit of excluding a market of consumers
with average video cards?

They are targeting average video cards, it's just that they're targeting
the average cards of 2006.

That's somewhat contradictory with his statement that he wishes the Intel
video chips would go away. Whether you choose to believe it or not, most
people do not own high end GPUs today, nor will they tomorrow. Even above
the casual gamer, there are many folks who are still running GF2-era
devices. In 2006 I imagine that just as many people will still be running
the GF4s and Radeons that are in their computers today, the same cards that
Mr. Sweeney has targeted to exclude.

Am Thu, 26 Feb 2004 23:41:36 GMT, "Kevin C."

That's somewhat contradictory with his statement that he wishes the Intel
video chips would go away. Whether you choose to believe it or not, most
people do not own high end GPUs today, nor will they tomorrow. Even above
the casual gamer, there are many folks who are still running GF2-era
devices. In 2006 I imagine that just as many people will still be running
the GF4s and Radeons that are in their computers today, the same cards that
Mr. Sweeney has targeted to exclude.



He meant to say 'at maximum detail level'.. Then the high end cards
would come to a crawl. Not many people play with details maxed out. So
they get in, say, Ut2k4 decent framerates with a Ti4200 (which I
have). If I turn on all the details with 4xAA and 8x Anisotropy then
it's a slide show. That's what he meant.

"Kevin C." wrote in message
om...

That's somewhat contradictory with his statement that he wishes the Intel
video chips would go away. Whether you choose to believe it or not, most
people do not own high end GPUs today, nor will they tomorrow. Even above
the casual gamer, there are many folks who are still running GF2-era
devices. In 2006 I imagine that just as many people will still be running
the GF4s and Radeons that are in their computers today, the same cards
that
Mr. Sweeney has targeted to exclude.

Well sucks to be them. It's about time software started pushing the limits
of hardware again. There was a time when people were very happy to get
30fps from Quake 2. Now all you see is people concerned that they are only
getting 90 fps in UT2003, etc. If in 2006 people still choose to hold on to
their GF4s and Radeons they are going to be left out on new titles, and they
only have themselves to blame. You cannot expect the software developers to
stand still for the benefit of those who are unwilling to upgrade.

There has only been two occasions when I've installed a gfx card and said
'wow' to myself. The first was playing Unreal and Q2 on a Voodoo 2, the
other was after I got a GF3 and seen all the Q3 engined games in high-res
with all the candy. All the cards since then have only done what the GF3
did, just faster. In other words there has been little in the way of
innovation. What has been long overdue in the graphics industry is a next
'wow' card.


K

On Fri, 27 Feb 2004 01:08:25 -0000, "K" wrote:

There has only been two occasions when I've installed a gfx card and said
'wow' to myself. The first was playing Unreal and Q2 on a Voodoo 2, the
other was after I got a GF3 and seen all the Q3 engined games in high-res
with all the candy. All the cards since then have only done what the GF3
did, just faster. In other words there has been little in the way of
innovation. What has been long overdue in the graphics industry is a next
'wow' card.

Far Cry on a 9700 Pro graphics card gave me a "wow". Even seeing the
rain on water in Morrowind in a GF4 was a "wow" moment for me. There
has been a lot of innovation in hardware and software since the GF3.
--
Andrew. To email unscramble & remove spamtrap.
Help make Usenet a better place: English is read downwards,
please don't top post. Trim messages to quote only relevent text.
Check groups.google.com before asking a question.

In alt.comp.periphs.videocards.ati Kevin C. wrote:

wrote in message
...

They are targeting average video cards, it's just that they're targeting
the average cards of 2006.
That's somewhat contradictory with his statement that he wishes the Intel
video chips would go away.

The exact quote is "The only thing more we could wish for is for the
badly underpowered integrated graphics chips from Intel and others to go
away or improve enough that they aren't such unfortunate handicaps for
game developers." I see no contradiction there.

Whether you choose to believe it or not, most people do not own high
end GPUs today, nor will they tomorrow. Even above the casual gamer,
there are many folks who are still running GF2-era devices.

I'm perfectly aware of that, but what kind of performance do you expect
from today's high-end games running on that level of hardware? There are
plenty of games out today that won't even run on anything lower than a
GF3.

In 2006 I imagine that just as many people will still be running the
GF4s and Radeons that are in their computers today, the same cards
that Mr. Sweeney has targeted to exclude.

Quite possible, but they shouldn't expect all progress to halt just to
accomodate them. Also, how many new computers will be sold with
GeForce4s then? Keep in mind that this engine is what Epic hope other
developers will be using for years after its release, meaning that
limiting it to old hardware makes even less sense. And hey, if a
developer wants to support old machines in 2008 they can still license
the UT2003, Quake3 or any other engine!

-a

wrote in message
...
The exact quote is "The only thing more we could wish for is for the
badly underpowered integrated graphics chips from Intel and others to go
away or improve enough that they aren't such unfortunate handicaps for
game developers." I see no contradiction there.

If these "unfortunate handicaps" are what the average system is running,
there's your contradiction. Mr. Sweeney wants to deliver his graphics
engine; how many computers can actually run it is only relevant insofar as
the bottom line. If Mr. Sweeney was interested in targeting average systems,
his quote would have been "The only thing we could wish for is to be able to
come up with clever algorithms and optimizations that would allow our engine
to run smoothly on second-tier hardware".

I'm perfectly aware of that, but what kind of performance do you expect
from today's high-end games running on that level of hardware? There are
plenty of games out today that won't even run on anything lower than a
GF3.

FYI, I play Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries and Age of Mythology on a Voodoo3. I
have no complaints about the quality of graphics. It _could_ be nicer,
certainly, but it doesn't _need_ to be. That is, I've seen UT2k3 on a GF4
and I didn't think the small improvement over UT was worthy of a $200
upgrade. The games I can't play on a Voodoo3 are surprisingly narrow.
Namely, they're all FPSes that require hardware T&L or some equally useless
feature that adds little or nothing to picture quality, much less gameplay.

Quite possible, but they shouldn't expect all progress to halt just to
accomodate them. Also, how many new computers will be sold with
GeForce4s then? Keep in mind that this engine is what Epic hope other
developers will be using for years after its release, meaning that
limiting it to old hardware makes even less sense. And hey, if a
developer wants to support old machines in 2008 they can still license
the UT2003, Quake3 or any other engine!

And nobody said otherwise! But at the same time, that doesn't mean that Epic
and Mr. Sweeney are gunning for the average system, if you care to get back
to that point.

Tim Sweeny is waiting for Carmack to announce specs for his
next engine before the Epic team "begins innovating".