The new Trailer for CryENGINE 3 shows off lens flare, plant and cloth simulation, and unique looking toads!
Sometimes I wonder what audience do trailers for video games have in mind. First there was the trailer showing off explosions and photorealistic faces in a shooter coming out later this year; and another trailer that uses live-action scenes to somehow advertise the game. The trailer here kind of doesn’t focus on the new Crysis 3 game, but on the engine that makes it so pretty: CryENGINE 3.
The engine is definitely pretty, though some terms used might be hard to figure out for the average gamer.
To get technical, I’ll have to explain some features that are shown off in CryENGINE 3. I’m not an expert on this but I’ll explain it the best way possible. First off the “pixel accurate displacement mapping” indicates that pixels are properly displaced over a given object. So there is no longer any ‘blurring’ effect when you see an object up-close. “Tesselated” for the vegetation and the toad mean that these objects are covered in pieces that are identically shaped. Take a look at the leaf again and you’ll notice that one side is frayed and has a hole from a caterpillar snack, while the other side looks preserved. “Procedural HDR flares and shapes” mean that there is now procedurally generated dynamic ranges of light and dark areas in an image. In the scene with the soldier standing against the light from behind, you can see that his body is shaded dark while the objects to the side or the light coming from the wall don’t mess with the dark theme of the image. The CryENGINE 3 also shows off how clothing and vegetation adjust to objects colliding with them, such as the wind of a helicopter passing through cloth and vegetation.
I’ll admit that the trailer for CryENGINE 3 looks good, but only slightly for me. I had to watch it a few times in order to figure out what the “pixel accurate displacement mapping” looked like, and I still don’t know if I got it right. Plus, while that is a well rendered toad at the end, I don’t think the CryENGINE 3 is going to be used anytime soon to make a sequel to Frogger.
