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Gaming-related Tech Demos Discussion Thread

98 posts · originally from https://geek.digit.in/community/threads/gaming-related-tech-demos-discussion-thread.189679/

Desmond
Desmond Original post #1
Jan 28, 2015 at 2:47 PM
This thread is dedicated to sharing and discussing tech demos for various gaming engines.

Some are listed below:

Cryengine 4:





Unread Engine 4







Share more as you come by them.
A
Jan 28, 2015 at 3:16 PM
[YOUTUBE]/watch?v=rf045VYP3z4[/YOUTUBE]
Scarily photorealistic

PS: Wow, just look at that apartment, would love to live in one like that :D
Anorion
Anorion #3
Jan 28, 2015 at 3:26 PM
Can do this in Unity as well. It just won't be optimized. It will do fine for an escape room title, or a point and click adventure, but not for an fps or a game with really large areas, such as an MMO.

Zangetsu
Jan 28, 2015 at 4:01 PM
Frostbite, Gamebryo, idTech5, MT Framework, RAGE, 4A Engine, Anvil, Dunia Engine 2, Fox Engine
gameranand
Jan 28, 2015 at 5:38 PM
UE looks really impressive. I just want it very optimized. :p
SaiyanGoku
Jan 28, 2015 at 5:39 PM
Cryengine has been one of the best out there. I remember playing Crysis 2 and oh man, the visuals were way more stunning than anything I had ever seen in a game.
gameranand
Jan 28, 2015 at 5:56 PM
Cryengine has been one of the best out there. I remember playing Crysis 2 and oh man, the visuals were way more stunning than anything I had ever seen in a game.

Crysis 1 and Warhead were better than C2. :|
Desmond
Desmond #8
Jan 28, 2015 at 6:01 PM
Crysis 1 and Warhead were better than C2. :|

Gameplaywise, but Graphicswise Crysis 2 was better. I wish it was in an open jungle like environment though.

- - - Updated - - -

UE looks really impressive. I just want it very optimized. :p

We can only know that once some games are released for it.

- - - Updated - - -

Can do this in Unity as well. It just won't be optimized. It will do fine for an escape room title, or a point and click adventure, but not for an fps or a game with really large areas, such as an MMO.


This demo won't really be optimized for mainstream hardware either.
gameranand
Jan 28, 2015 at 8:20 PM
C2 got better than previous games visual vise after they got that HD Texture update.
Nerevarine
Jan 28, 2015 at 8:42 PM
[YOUTUBE]watch?v=IA0Im3j-wf4[/YOUTUBE]

Unity 5.0 - voted most user friendly engine according to developers and #5 best tech invention (2014)

Desmond
Desmond #12
Jan 29, 2015 at 2:04 PM
That would explain why suddenly there are so many 3D mobile games.

Seeing all these Tech Demos I feel like all game engines have reached stagnancy. All of them look good but there is little that really separates one from the other in terms of graphics. Also all of them are pretty much at the peak of optimization in order to render all such scenes.

I think the real next step would be to create a truly voxel based engine or a fully raytracing engine.

Here is an example of a Voxel based engine:



And here is an example of a Raytracing engine:



Both of these are still experimental since there is no optimized way to render graphics using voxels or by raytracing in real time.

- - - Updated - - -

In case you are wondering what a Voxel is, a voxel is a volumentric pixel. Therefore, its a pixel in a truly three dimensional space unlike current graphics where the scenes are rendered two dimensionally using techniques such as z-buffering which gives an illusion of depth. The limitations of using voxels is that the number of voxels required to render complex scenes can become extremely huge and rendering such a scene would require tremendous amounts of memory.

Raytracing is a technique of tracing the path of a light ray in reverse (i.e. from the eye to the object we are looking at), simulating its effects such as reflection and refraction with objects and rendering the scene using that data. Therefore it has the potential to render extremely photorealistic scenes.
Anorion
Anorion #13
Jan 29, 2015 at 2:48 PM
Yup voxels based engines are really making their presence known. Till now, people thought that voxel means blocky, which is no longer the case.


And Nvidia's gameworks tech tends to be used in multiple engines
so these are already being used, from Cryengine to Evolution



But realism alone does not make a good game, we could do with good AI or great gameplay
Desmond
Desmond #14
Jan 29, 2015 at 3:43 PM
I don't think there will be a fully voxel based engine anytime soon, at least not for another 5-6 years. They are simply not optimized enough to run on mainstream hardware.

- - - Updated - - -

I am really more interested in Raytracing engines but those are even more nascent than voxel engines.

In case you are wondering, here is what Raytracing can do:

*hof.povray.org/images/bigthumb/glasses.jpg

More examples: POV-Ray Hall of Fame

Those are still images however, and creating animated scenes is still far off.

However, someone did create Raytraced Quake 3 sometime back. Let me see if I can find the video for that.

- - - Updated - - -

Got it:

Anorion
Anorion #15
Jan 29, 2015 at 3:43 PM
procedural generation is another option, it only means longer load times, but the memory footprint is very low
like 200-300 MB can be converted to a 96KB game if it is procedurally generated
.kkrieger is a demo of this, if you don't want to download you can just look at it here, but the gfx scales according to the machine

Desmond
Desmond #16
Jan 29, 2015 at 3:51 PM
Yeah, I played .Kkrieger. Back in the day it had pretty high system requirements considering its small sub-100KB or so filesize.

However, they haven't released the next episodes after this one.
warfreak
warfreak #17
Feb 3, 2015 at 12:02 PM
"A bad workman blames his tools"

A good workman, however, creates masterpieces with what he's got.

Game engines are just middleware. How good a game looks actually depends more on the level design and art development than the game engine.

Engines only provide a set of tools. They may help in ease of implementing those tools but in the end it depends on developers on how well they utilize them. I feel that with the current generation, most of the top engines are more or less in the same page in terms of technical capabilities.

A classic example is how the last generation of games were created. We can all agree that Cryengine or Frostbyte or idTech5 may have had more "better looking" visuals than Unreal Engine but look at the number of games other than the flagship titles that implemented them.

UE on the other hand spawned not only games but entire franchises with varying levels of graphical fidelity and gameplay. I'm talking about Bioshock, Mass Effect, Borderlands and many more. These games used "a heavily modified" unreal engine and not just plain vanilla unreal engine. Which brings me to my "good workman" argument.

tl;dr :- no engine is better than the other in terms of graphics, it all depends on game developers
Anorion
Anorion #18
Feb 3, 2015 at 12:15 PM
^wanted to post something similar. The pre-release game-play videos always look great, but the finished project is never up to the expectations the devs themselves have set.
Realism could have actually killed good design.

Digital Extreme went on to use Evolution instead of Unreal in their latest project, and it came out well
Desmond
Desmond #19
Feb 3, 2015 at 5:24 PM
"A bad workman blames his tools"

A good workman, however, creates masterpieces with what he's got.

Game engines are just middleware. How good a game looks actually depends more on the level design and art development than the game engine.

Engines only provide a set of tools. They may help in ease of implementing those tools but in the end it depends on developers on how well they utilize them. I feel that with the current generation, most of the top engines are more or less in the same page in terms of technical capabilities.

A classic example is how the last generation of games were created. We can all agree that Cryengine or Frostbyte or idTech5 may have had more "better looking" visuals than Unreal Engine but look at the number of games other than the flagship titles that implemented them.

UE on the other hand spawned not only games but entire franchises with varying levels of graphical fidelity and gameplay. I'm talking about Bioshock, Mass Effect, Borderlands and many more. These games used "a heavily modified" unreal engine and not just plain vanilla unreal engine. Which brings me to my "good workman" argument.

tl;dr :- no engine is better than the other in terms of graphics, it all depends on game developers

Makes sense.

However, the purpose of Tech Demos is to demonstrate cutting edge technologies. Whether developers use those tools or not is another matter.
Desmond
Desmond #20
Mar 16, 2015 at 4:50 PM
An early Vulkan API tech demo running on Android



For those of you who don't know, Vulkan is a new graphics API that is a successor to OpenGL and a competitor to Direct3D 12. Unlike Direct3D 12 however, Vulkan can run on all mobile devices, PC, Mac, Linux, Windows and even older windows versions such as XP and 7. It is essentially Mantle 2.0.
Nerevarine
Mar 16, 2015 at 5:46 PM
if im not mistaken, Vulkan is a fork from Mantle itself that both Nvidia and AMD will support, thats very good news for the green army !

anyways

Desmond
Desmond #22
Mar 17, 2015 at 2:03 PM
No, Vulkan is a fork of OpenGL. Vulkab is also managed by Khronos group, the same group that manages OpenGL.
Desmond
Desmond #23
Aug 17, 2015 at 7:16 AM
The new CryEngine 3 tech demo shows photorealistic textures :

Desmond
Desmond #24
Apr 27, 2016 at 3:37 PM
CryEngine 5 announce video with some gameplay demos.

Desmond
Desmond #25
May 8, 2017 at 4:32 PM
ProtoStar - An Unreal Engine + Vulkan tech demo running on Samsung Galaxy S7

Desmond
Desmond #26
Jan 14, 2018 at 2:44 PM
bssunilreddy
Dec 10, 2019 at 6:01 PM
How is this a tech demo?
Through this we play games with what? A PC right.
Since I don't know where to post it
I posted it here
I think this piece of software is a brilliant idea to integrate all other launchers into 1 place and keep tabs on them.

Sent from my Nokia 8.1 using Tapatalk
Desmond
Desmond #33
Dec 10, 2019 at 6:24 PM
But this is not that much of a cutting edge technology. A tech-demo is a demonstration of some new technology in graphics or other such computing, see the other posts above for examples.
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #34
Dec 11, 2019 at 1:30 PM
Yeah! this is Gaming Engine thread as mentioned in OP.

@Desmond David : Perhaps, you should change the title as per context.
Nerevarine
Jan 29, 2020 at 2:37 PM
new Modern Warfare is a new benchmark in graphics quality with respect to requirements.
Frostbite may now have a contender..
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #37
Jan 29, 2020 at 3:10 PM
Hmm, Battlefield 5 vs COD MW
Desmond
Desmond #38
Jan 29, 2020 at 4:12 PM
Battlefield 5 also uses ray-tracing AFAIK.
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #39
Jan 29, 2020 at 4:32 PM
^^Yup, it was the first title to advertise ray-tracing in FPS game
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #40
Mar 25, 2020 at 9:04 PM
Now, how this dev revamped the Tomb Raider 2 (1997) using Unreal Engine 4 is so mesmerizing

true_lies
true_lies #41
May 8, 2020 at 3:33 PM

And the official teaser for Crysis remastered


Sent from my Nokia 6.1 Plus using Tapatalk
Desmond
Desmond #42
May 8, 2020 at 4:13 PM
Remaster of a tech demo, more like. XD

IMO Crysis wasn't that good of a game. It's graphics were it's real selling point. Also it's graphics aren't that bad even by today's standards, so I wonder what would be the advantage of a remaster, other than ray tracing perhaps.

Sent from my GM1911 using Tapatalk
chimera201
May 8, 2020 at 5:32 PM
Crysis is a good game. There is no other game where I felt like being the Predator. But the remaster is pointless especially when it's coming to Switch. They should make a new Crysis game with at-least one year exclusive to PC.
Nerevarine
May 8, 2020 at 5:35 PM
The most fun segments of crysis were against human enemies.
Desmond
Desmond #45
May 13, 2020 at 9:10 PM
Unreal Engine 5 announced


Sent from my GM1911 using Tapatalk
Nerevarine
May 13, 2020 at 9:37 PM
Rip my GPU. It was nice knowing you
chimera201
May 13, 2020 at 9:58 PM
It's just a tech demo for now. I don't think devs will just throw away normal maps. It will be good for indies though.
Desmond
Desmond #49
Jun 1, 2020 at 9:46 AM
I have been thinking of getting 2080 super once this lockdown ends. It's expensive AF though, so perhaps down payment is the only way to go.
thetechfreak
Jun 16, 2020 at 5:54 AM
Not really a demo but looks amazing nonetheless :

I have been thinking of getting 2080 super once this lockdown ends. It's expensive AF though, so perhaps down payment is the only way to go.
You've probably delayed it enough for next gen GPU to be out soon. I'd wait for that.

Sent from my vivo 1807 using Tapatalk
Desmond
Desmond #52
Jun 29, 2020 at 12:49 AM
Looks like the UE5 demo.

Apparently Sony has some deal with Epic, that's why they don't mention UE5 and PC in the same sentence.
Desmond
Desmond #53
Sep 12, 2020 at 10:34 PM
Nvidia RTX tech demo

Æsoteric Positron
Sep 20, 2020 at 2:45 PM
Also it's graphics aren't that bad even by today's standards, so I wonder what would be the advantage of a remaster, other than ray tracing perhaps.
:+1: , it is improved , tho it doesn't wows
Nerevarine
Sep 20, 2020 at 2:46 PM
Even I will upgrade once covid crisis is over, looking at 3070 now.
Æsoteric Positron
Sep 21, 2020 at 5:41 PM
Will target for 3080 or 3070 now. Just waiting for other OEMs like Zotac to start manufacturing. Will check their costs and then will decide.
Do you really want the aftermarket cooling solution though? The founder's edition looks sic! No other design is better than that imo.
Nerevarine
Sep 21, 2020 at 5:43 PM
There is no warranty for founders edition cards. For nvidia, asus and zotac are best options in india
Nerevarine
Sep 21, 2020 at 10:37 PM
Indian service industry is filled with assholes
W
Sep 22, 2020 at 9:08 PM

Indian service industry is filled with assholes

No hope for any quality after sales support in India unless you know someone.(just like most other things) In case of gigabyte too it is probably because of their rep eddie on /r/indiangaming that their online reviews are good because those who had bad offline experience would probably never met eddie & never posted negative online reviews.
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #64
May 31, 2021 at 7:20 AM
For a moment I thought it was shot in GoPro camera :)

Desmond
Desmond #65
May 31, 2021 at 1:18 PM
Wow. Though you can see the graininess of the raytracing in some places.
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #66
Jun 1, 2021 at 3:20 AM
Wow. Though you can see the graininess of the raytracing in some places.
Exactly. The Rain effects is so realistic. The water effects on Wipers movement is so awesome.
And I was surprised when I saw this game was released in 2014 on PS4.
PS5 has pumped up the graphics a lot :)

I will buy this exclusive game for sure if I get my hands on PS5.
A
aby geek #68
Jun 11, 2021 at 10:24 PM
Any one who has been waiting for this?
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #69
Jun 12, 2021 at 8:46 AM

Insane amount of detailing by Nanite
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #71
Feb 2, 2022 at 12:12 PM
Another real life graphics in Racing

A
aby geek #72
Feb 3, 2022 at 10:38 AM
Any good presentations from mobile game devs?
I remember vainglory and shadow fight 3 talked about their development process?
Desmond
Desmond #74
Feb 14, 2022 at 10:55 AM
*store.steampowered.com/app/1691400/The_Market_of_Light/

Any of y'all tried this? It's a free playable tech demo of Unreal Engine 5.
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #75
Apr 12, 2022 at 11:10 AM

Got Goosebumps!! Damn Amazing for Tomb Raider Fans :)
Desmond
Desmond #76
May 15, 2022 at 12:46 PM
Imagining the Witcher 4 in Unreal Engine 5.

*www.reddit.com/comments/upo24i
Desmond
Desmond #79
Oct 10, 2022 at 9:10 AM
Raytracing with reshade is usually only screen space. It's not full fledged ray tracing so usually it doesn't work as well in indoor scenes, but outdoors it's usually not noticeable.
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #81
Nov 2, 2022 at 7:20 AM
This game was released on Switch and still with Cemu and RTX4090 they made it look like PC port with Breathtaking visuals.

Zangetsu
Zangetsu #82
Mar 31, 2023 at 10:26 AM
MetaHuman is Amazing


Nerevarine
Mar 31, 2023 at 1:54 PM
Wow Senua IRL
Desmond
Desmond #84
Mar 31, 2023 at 6:43 PM
MetaHuman is Amazing


Wow. That actually looks pretty good.

Seems like the basic premise is to generate face rigs on the fly.
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #85
Mar 31, 2023 at 7:57 PM
Yes, and the Unreal 5.2 demo of Lords of the Fallen is pretty awesome too.

Nerevarine
Apr 1, 2023 at 6:50 AM
When I heard we can travel two worlds in this game, immediately I get reminded of Soul Reaver. Perhaps finally we have a worthy successor, a soulsborne clone too. cant wait!
true_lies
true_lies #87
Apr 24, 2023 at 5:24 AM
Unrecord photorealistic gameplay
Vyom
Vyom #89
Apr 24, 2023 at 10:13 AM
Unrecord photorealistic gameplay
That is some God level graphics. I thought someone was trolling that it's a game when I watched this first time. But that was on phone.
I just watched on my 1080p 27" monitor, and I still feel someone is trolling that it's in game graphics.
W
Apr 24, 2023 at 3:20 PM
That is some God level graphics. I thought someone was trolling that it's a game when I watched this first time. But that was on phone.
I just watched on my 1080p 27" monitor, and I still feel someone is trolling that it's in game graphics.
Graphics are indeed quite good though I think reloading & shooting pistol will give it away to those experienced with arms in US.
SaiyanGoku
Feb 3, 2024 at 4:11 AM

Modders did what nvidia doesn't want to?
omega44-xt
Feb 3, 2024 at 7:28 AM

Modders did what nvidia doesn't want to?
Yeah, was expected. I hope Nvidia is forced to make DLSS easily accessible like how they were forced to with gsync.
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #94
Nov 3, 2024 at 9:26 AM
Which CGI engine is this one ? Damn looks so real. The movies made on it will be Block Buster

Desmond
Desmond #95
Nov 3, 2024 at 5:42 PM
Seems AI generated.
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #96
Nov 4, 2024 at 9:10 AM
Yeah. AI has taken over reality. Hard to find out real or fake :)
K_akash_i
K_akash_i #97
Nov 4, 2024 at 2:09 PM
Internet is already getting flooded with ai content, Everything fabricated.
Desmond
Desmond #98
Nov 4, 2024 at 5:25 PM
I suspect because the characters move very little and do simple movements across what looks like few seconds worth of frames. Tell tale sign of AI generated video.