Character Studio is a great program- depending on what you're doing. If you are big into animations and the like, especially organic in sytle, CS is where it's at. It's pretty easy to learn and can seriously give a real life feel to your anims. On the other hand, if all you want are static models than I wouldn't even bother with 3D Max for the price it is. I personally use it all the time, from first person animations to the upcoming character models.
Gas period will depend. We messed with something similiar with Force Recon, which was kinda cool- except the smoke effect was hard on slower systems. I dunno how UT will handle this, so we'll have to wait and see. As far as a chemical agent in the air which can be invisible and just as deadly, that's possible too. The problem is, if we incorporate it into our loadout system (being able to buy chem weapons) then the opposing team may not know this, and frankly there ain't no way you can walk into a chemically contaminated area and live without protection- so it'd be in a way unfair. If we can figure out simple and/or effective way to do this, we may include it in 3.0 or a later version.
