SAN FRANCISCO – What will videogames look like in the near future? Epic Games offered a glimpse at the future of graphics in the form of a real-time animation demo that showed off the eye-popping capabilities of the upgraded Unreal Engine 3.
The industry's biggest game-technology maker showed off the two-minute scene, called "Samaritan," at the Game Developers Conference here Thursday. The demo highlights the power of Epic's latest version of Unreal Engine 3, a tool that powers the amazing visuals in games like Gears of War.
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"We call this our love letter to developers," said Epic Vice President Mark Rein.
The improved gaming engine boasts many new graphical features, which Epic will soon be providing to its partners, who have used it to make titles like BioShock and Mass Effect.
The demo was created by a 12-person team in about two months, Epic Games President Michael Capps said during a Thursday press briefing at GDC. "Samaritan" was running on a custom-built system using off-the-shelf PC parts, Epic said, including three Nvidia GTX 580 graphics cards, which cost about $500 each.
Very few if any consumers today would be able to run the demo, but with the rapid advancement of technology, it's not unlikely that we'll be playing something that looks like this before too long.
"We have a pretty good idea of what's coming next," said Capps, who added that Epic is already in preproduction on a brand new title for the next generation of game machines.
