UE3 Tech Demo Dissected

[hal]

Back in March, Epic Games released an amazing tech demo known as the Samaritan trailer. NVIDIA is featuring an article on their site that goes into some depth to explain some of the bells and whistles on display like the Bokeh Depth of Field, Point Light Reflections, Static and Dynamic Reflection Shadows, Subsurface Scattering, and more.

The demo is certainly impressive and and Epic is fond of teasing aspects of new titles with them, so it's fun to think we might see a Samaritan-like game at some point in the future. Given that a trio of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 graphics cards power all the DX11 eye-candy seen onscreen it's a good bet though that it may be a while before we see a game from them that looks like that. (thanks elmur_fud)

 

[Bgood]

Indeed, very impressive. I think even the biggest graphics cynics, would have to admit that the tech advancements, particularly in lighting and reflections, over the last few years really change the in game realism and add to the immersion.

Now all that needs to happen is for Epic to throw all that new tech into a PC game, as seems to be happening for BF3.

 

[WaitForTheRain]

The tech looks great, but I doubt that we'll be seeing anything as pretty as that in a PC game any time soon if they had to use 3 GTX 580's to run that in realtime.

 

[elmuerte]

in 6 months you'll only need 1 high-end card;

 

[WaitForTheRain]

in 6 months you'll only need 1 high-end card;

Even if that's correct, it'd have to be one hell of a card to do the job of 3 of NVidia's current top of the range cards, and it would have a giant price tag to follow. The price for a computer capable of running something like that would probably be out of reach for the majority of gamers.

 

[hal]

in 6 months you'll only need 1 high-end card;

It seems like a safe bet to say that any new Epic Games title is going to be able to run on a console and Microsoft/Sony replacements are a couple of years off.

 

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

in 6 months you'll only need 1 high-end card;

within six months.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxi7JRJrod4

at 1:46

 

[[GU]elmur_fud]

In the paragraph following the storyboards.

with enough time and effort, could the Samaritan demo run on just one graphics card, the most common configuration in gaming computers? Epic’s Mittring believes so,

Jumping down a bit.

In all likelihood, a game of equal fidelity won’t be a reality until the next generation of graphics cards

What I find kinda curious is they say they kept hitting the 580's 1.5GB memmorry limit. Wouldn't that be 4.5 in 3 way SLI...

I also like the tidbit about GPU native Tessellation. I see some potention for untapped visual effects there.

 

[Bgood]

[QUOTE='[GU]

What I find kinda curious is they say they kept hitting the 580's 1.5GB memmorry limit. Wouldn't that be 4.5 in 3 way SLI...

I also like the tidbit about GPU native Tessellation. I see some potention for untapped visual effects there.[/QUOTE]


No you only get 1.5 shared however many linked cards, but now there are single 580s with 3GB onboard maybe sli'ing 2 of those would've worked as good.

As for games not looking that good, the BF3 trailers look like a big step nearer to Samaritan quality in game.

Performance expectations may change once optimised engines built around DX11 dominate the development scene.