Ok, just tried it out on Barrysworld servers, CMGA (sp?) DNA and Wireplay servers. Now, these servers are some of my favorites and I played on them alot. So, believe me when I say I know how my UT plays on those servers. Now, believe me when I say....WOW!
It made no mention of D3D stuff, but my UT runs faster on now! 5 to 8 frames faster...AVERAGE. No lockups, crashes or stutters (but I haven't experienced them before). I run a PIII 550 TnT 2 card with 256 megs of RAM. But, let me tell you, even with what I have I never saw my UT run like this before. UT runs in D3D.
Pings seemed average...stable.
Maps loaded up fast...hardly the two hour precaching. I jumped into a server in less than 5 seconds. It used to take 10 to 15 seconds.
Server refresh rate...1 minute 15 secs to complete. Not bad...used to take five minutes.
As for the modem still sending traffic after disconnect...don't know...I use ISDN and it's hard for me to benchmark. Usually after I disconnect, it's complete. Can't help you there.
Now, for mods. All my mods worked. Inf, Eavy Hunter, UWar, and Akimbo to name a few. All mutators worked. No crashes.
In game. The speed was fast. Even with pings that are normal to me, it seemed I was playing on LAN. Yes, sounds strange, and it wierded me out too. It was fast and smooth. Unbelievable. However, weapons still would go into the ground or stick halfway in and out of walls.
Skins, didn't notice any wierd skins...unlike the 429. But it's early and I haven't conducted a full test for that yet.
Unreal Ed. No obvious improvements. But no crashes or crazy stuff either. Seemed the same.
If this is the version they will release...then I say get it. But I think they will come out with another one...still some bugs. One bug, of course is the weapons in the ground. The other was the pulse rifle...actually...most weapons...not making any sound when you fire. It only happened to me on Lava maps.
The spam messages not showing up were a blessing. You here the silly auto taunts, but it didn't clutter up the chat area. NICE! But wierd...had to get used to it because I am conditioned to see those messages and shuffle through the crap to find the meat. But now all the messages are meat. Now, one thing about that I wasn't too happy about, but I can live with. I have a voice message bound to a custom message. For example soilder voice "INCOMING" with a custom message "Enemy, upper level". Normally you would see "INCOMING""Enemy, upper level" together. Now you only here the Incoming, but don't see it. Not a bad thing...but something new to get used to.
Nice job Epic. I'll post more when I have time to complete a thorough test.