Polycount’s member ‘Disting‘ has released some new screenshots from his Deus Ex: Human Revolution remake in Unreal Engine 4. The attention to detail in these images is extraordinary, and Disting has already managed to provide something that most developers won’t be able to come close to. Ironically, the next Deus Ex game may not look as good as this fan-made map, so kudos to Disting. Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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” The attention to detail in these images is extraordinary, and Disting
has already managed to provide something that most developers won’t be
able to come close to.”
John, you seem to be missing the fact that this is a map and not a game. The aim of developers is to create a game that you can actually play, and not make something that’s just for showing off. If developers were to create maps just to display them, I’m pretty sure they could easily blow this out of the water, given their resources. While modders have achieved great things quite often, it’s downright wrong to discredit developers like this.
It’s not discrediting them, it’s just showing what can be done rather than pleasing their pay masters and then having them downgrade it like we’ve seen recently.
Calling out on developers for their inability, while comparing a game to a static scene does count towards discredit one way or another.
Actually, Gabe Newel admitted that modders beat them with their own game by modding it, so even a game developer admits such things. You’ll also find that game devs take ideas from modders, just like Bethesda did with Skyrim.
But did he imply that Valve’s own employees are inept? He certainly didn’t. Improving on a game and creating material from scratch are entirely different things. If modders were to put out games that looked like the above screenshots completely for free, there would be no need for the video game industry to exist. Unfortunately that’s not the case, because good games require a good amount of investment.
The point of this was the scene was textured and lit over the course of a single day. That’s fast by development standards.
I think the game looks a ton better than these screenshots. The game actually has an atmosphere while these are just over saturated renders w/ no character.
Amazing how materials can give such an amazing and realistic look to everything. Lovely texturing with the right colour palette and you can approach photorealism. Also with proper lighting of course. (like at some points of Metro Last Light and now in Survarium with its incredible lighting)
Yep 🙂 i like UE4 and CryEng. 3 everything looks so GREAT 🙂
Can’t wait to see it in Real Games AA & AAA and see FPS lol
Looks like a good CV for his next interview at any of the big gaming companies.
I’m not being a dick about anything, and neither am I arguing. I’m just pointing out the obvious. I don’t see why you need to feel so threatened.
I just think you’re over reacting. Developers can be bettered, modders come along and prove it and get employed because of such work, that’s not discrediting game developers themselves.
Of course, I understand that. But if you read through the part of the article which I quoted, you’ll see it’s saying that developers will never be able to achieve that kind of graphics, all the while disregarding the fact that developers could easily surpass it if they intended to just show off a static render. And that’s where my problem with the article lies. It’s misleading because it compares a game’s quality to a mere static render. Is this indeed what the author (John) might have intended? Perhaps not… maybe he was just trying to showcase something good. But the way it has been phrased leads me to believe something else. I’m not one to read between lines on the internet, so I take things at face value as far as these articles are concerned.
Well, the shots are in-engine and the fact that it’s not an actual game is irrelevant, just like devs say “the footage was done all in-engine”. It’s not a static scene either, it’s all realtime and not some “static” Maya render you know.
“the fact that it’s not an actual game is irrelevant”
How so? Would you still say the same thing if developers made a “game” like that with uber graphics which runs at 15 fps and then sold it you for 60 bucks and said, hey it’s not really a game so it’s not relevant? A game has to be playable. You can have photorealistic graphics right now via ray tracing, but a ray-traced game would not be playable on the majority of gaming PCs.
And it’s a static render because it’s a set of single scenes with a static camera in each case. How it would actually perform in a real-time interactive situation like a proper game is more important.
It’s an artists vision of what could be, just like a game developers vision of what could be. It’s quite easy to turn that into a playable game, that’s what UE4 does and have very little scripting or code to do it.
I’ve used UE in the past just to do maps, it was pretty easy but now you can do a lot more than just make maps, you can make simple games in little time
“What could be” doesn’t necessarily translate into what’s technically feasible. And if it really were that easy to turn graphics like that into a proper game with playable FPS on mainstream gaming PCs, it would have already been done. Furthermore, UE4’s usability has nothing to do with how the game performs on an end user’s machine. Anyone can put together a map by following tutorials… but making sure that map plays well with characters, animation, AI, textures etc. all the while functioning within hardware constraints is the hard part.
Oh goodness, he’s doing it in UE4, of course it’s technically possible, just like UE4 tech demos are technically possible to do in real games. Just look at that sample of the FPS demo that comes with UE4.
If it was done in Maya then you might say it’s not technically possible but UE4 is used to make games.
I’m sorry, but UE4 isn’t used to make “games”. UE4 is just a tool in the game development pipeline. Of course, I’m talking about proper full-priced games here. Hobby projects use fewer tools obviously.
Now, the sample FPS that ships with UE4 is just that, a sample to get you started. It comes with a single empty test level with a gun… no characters, no AI, nothing, and even then it has an 85% GPU usage on a 780Ti (you can check the Youtube videos). Furthermore, It doesn’t even scratch the surface of what UE4 is capable of, and it certainly doesn’t look as good as the screenshots above. Now try something more full-sized, like the Elemental demo, and you’ll understand where I’m coming from. Try running it on your GTX 660 (a mainstream gaming card) at 1080p and see what sort of framerate you get. I can assure you it won’t cross 30.
Tech demos are used to show what the engine can do. You seem to be making a conversation about games and tech demos and clearly you don’t understand what’s being shown to you.
You can optimise such things to play on midrange hardware now, the Elemental demo runs above 30fps at 1080p on my midrange system(20-30 mainly) but what do you expect?
“You seem to be making a conversation about games and tech demos and clearly you don’t understand what’s being shown to you.”
— So please explain, I’m all eyes (and ears if necessary).
“You can optimise such things to play on midrange hardware now, the
Elemental demo runs well above 30fps at 1080p on my midrange system
because it’s optimised for such hardware.”
— I’d love to see a video of you running it on a 660 at 30+ FPS. The demo runs at barely 30 FPS on a 680 at 1080p. And mind you I’m talking about running the demo on “Epic” settings. Low settings is pretty much UE3 stuff that lower-end cards can handle.
“The PC Elemental techdemo was done on top end hardware to show the tech.”
— It also requires top-end hardware to run with all its bells and whistles enabled.
You don’t have a point, it’s a tech demo, it’s meant to show all the effects at full quality and yet it scales, just like this recreation would.
Yes, it’s a tech demo… just like those screenshots are “tech demos”. That’s MY point. What’s yours?
And you need to show me how it scales. Especially on mainstream gaming hardware like yours.
Man, running the Elemental demo on my cruddy 560 Ti 448… it can’t handle it well…
Anyway, this thing featured here is some beautiful eye-candy, but it isn’t a game. I’m guessing you could run around in it, but it’d be nothing more than something like the Realistic Render demo.
That said, there’s little preventing it from becoming a game and looking like that, aside from some hard work and optimization, in my opinion.
Maybe I’m tossing a useless opinion into this argument though, because I’m a little unsure of what points are attempting to be made. It seemed clear at the start, but now…
CoolinGibbon, you’re saying that something like this wouldn’t be possible as a full game, yes? That it’d be too demanding to be possible?
And Sean, you’re saying it could be possible, even in the hands of a hobbyist/modder, to make this quality of visuals in a full game?
Yes it can, that’s why Epic have a starter licence for the engine so anyone can start their own project and it progress into a real game. Hobbists and modders get jobs by this, Epic even did a competition to show talent. You’ll be surprised what one person can do with these tools, that’s why Epic and Crytek give them away for free to a point or a small monthly sub to get started.
I agree that it’s possible, barring any hardware limitations, which almost sounds like what CoolingGibbon has issue with.
@CoolingGibbon
As long as the developer can run it to build it and play it to test, it can be done. Is your problem the fact that if it were built to look like this, that the average gamer wouldn’t have the hardware capable of running it, making it not so much of a game, but a tech-demo?
He’s already set the limitations in his own mind and then compared it to a real finished game all in a few sentences. :p
“CoolinGibbon, you’re saying that something like this wouldn’t be
possible as a full game, yes? That it’d be too demanding to be possible?”
It could be possible with optimization and cutting back on features a bit. But then again, if you’re cutting back on features, you’re sacrificing visual quality in the process. From that understanding, I can conclude that if a game were to be made in UE4 (for eg.) with all its effects enabled for the sake of graphics like in the above screenshots, only those gamers with top-end rigs would be able to play it. And there’s no point in making a game which most people can’t play.
That’s true, but developing specifically for that upper-end has helped push both hardware manufacturers and developers. It’s been uncommon since consoles have taken over gaming, but I would argue that something like Crysis had a positive impact on games.
For the longest time, it was all about pushing computers to the edge and while the best was available to mostly the more financially fortunate, manufacturers were pushed to develop more affordable hardware that could offer a similar level of visuals.
These days, with how big consoles are and having an absolute minimum requirement, you might be right. There may not be any point except for people with high-end rigs to stroke their ego with, but I would welcome the occasional out-of-reach game visuals as I believe it would still help keep a fire under Nvidia and AMD.
Well of course. Photorealism is somewhat of a holy grail when it comes to gaming graphics. But as of now, there’s a steep price to pay in terms of hardware. At the end of the day, you just want to be able to play the game on whatever rig you have and get your money’s worth. Still, I guess there are always demos such as Elemental and Infiltrator to showcase what-if scenarios.
My point is that this recreation can be made with optimisation into a game, it’s partly there because it’s in engine already.
As for scaling, with the default and setres 1920×1080 the demo runs 20-30fps on my FX 6300/GTX660, you said nothing about some “epic” settings. I assume you mean like the original Elemental demo rather than the PS4 one.
“My point is that this recreation can be made with optimisation into a game”
— Optimization to what extent? You want the performance of a blade server on a desktop?
” I assume you mean like the original Elemental demo rather than the PS4 one.”
— Well no, the UE4 demo has setting presets like Epic, High, Medium and Low. To get a better understanding of the visual differences, search Youtube for “elemental epic vs low”. There are a few videos detailing these presets.
You can change the preset from the editor:
Quick Settings – Engine Scalability Settings & Material Quality Level?
The default setting is most likely Medium (I don’t have the editor to verify), since I’m getting around 20 FPS on my 650Ti Boost, which to me is actually pretty good. And Low just looks down right horrible BTW.
Default settings setres 1920×1080. Not bad at all saying that is a lot happening in that shot.
http://i59.tinypic.com/etcshf.jpg
ACTUALLY it IS static render. You just can´t move inside this map with AI, Physics, sound engine and others algorhytm turned on with playable FPS. Yes, you can move with camera around in engine, but you have to “render scene” with in-engine renderer to get this quality. *flies away
Doesn’t matter, what matters is that this has been created in a game engine which can render such scenes in realtime, that’s what UE does.
You’re talking out of your ass. Have you even used UE4. Yeah you have to “render” the lighting because UE4 is using a lightmass baking system rather than a dynamic lighting system like CryEngine, but after you bake the light, you press play, and run around in the level in real time. It is not a static render, he already has a gif of a functioning security camera and I’m sure he’s working on a video, just like he did with his CryEngine Apartment.
I miss the yellow filter lol.
This looks crazy-good. I mean… damn. Those floors look like they’d be really slippery, though 🙂
Yep, people are getting confused like it’s some kind of CGI render. If you’ve used UE you know exactly what I mean, whatever you create you can jump in and play or interact in realtime.
What’s your FPS? I’m getting 20 something, so you might touch 30 with a good quad-core perhaps. But then again this is basically UE3, what with all the quality turned down and everything. But yeah, looks good nevertheless.
It’s the binary that was unofficially made. Starts off around 35fps and usually goes between 20s-30s with that ice monster at the end really dropping below 20. You can see the FPS in the shot.
Sorry I missed the FPS in the screenshot. 35 seems good for a start. I’m using the unofficial binary as well, and it doesn’t seem it has any option to change the preset.
There are some quality settings by using the console and using r. or sg. like sg.postprocessquality
Will have to try them out. Maybe someone can come up with the console command for changing the scalability preset as well. All the good stuff seems to be covered under that.
I think you’re misunderstanding the meaning of “static render” here. Static render in this case would mean the scene is not part of a game’s worldspace. The scene is isolated and “static” to any factors external to the scene. In a real game that’s not what happens. You’ve multiple scripts running in the background, path finding, AI, physics, etc. And if you’re designing an open-world game with large draw distances like Skyrim, then a huge worldspace has to be rendered, increasing memory requirements. All those things together form a “game”. Merely creating a scene and being able to move the camera around an empty level is not what I’d call a game.