Support NeoGAF

[Sygma]

I'm a big fan of Snowdrop and ID Tech 7

Division IP makes zero sense as online games graphically speaking, and Mario Rabbids to this day is still the best looking switch game imho

ID Tech 7 is kinda self explanatory, the thing has insane scalability and can deliver 4k / 120 fps cranked out on a 2080ti + haswell cpus on top of having top of the line HDR

And Frostbite last imho, yes its a fucking nightmare to work with but jesus does it look good


Obsolete one : Assassin's Creed engine, Creation engine, whatever the fuck From Software is using too

 

[Ballthyrm]

Snowdrop engine is amazing. Gamebryo is utter garbage.

Fun Fact, Mario Rabbids was made on Snowdrop

I thought the Division 1 looked great but the Division 2 somehow didn't impress and looked a lot worse. The snow added a lot of atmosphere to the game which the sequel obviously lacked.

Yeah, tell you everything you need to know about Art Direction, they used an improved engine but the game ended looking worse because of the un-inspired Art and setting.

 

[assurdum]

When people write "<X res> CBR" to describe a PS4 Pro title, are you meaning its that res natively/internally and then is checkerboarded to 2160p, or do you mean we don't know the internal res and <X res> is what you get after the CBR pass, which is then generally upscaled to 2160p in the same way a TV would handle non-native input res?

For example, I see people saying its a "1440p CBR" game, which I always took to mean it checkerboards the output from 1440p native to 2160p, but sometimes people reply and say the 1440p is not the native res and that its the result of the CBR pass.

Whats the deal?

CBR means it runs at half resolution natively for example 3200x1600p is 1900x1600p temporarily reconstructed via checkboard. Checkboard typically doesn't works for thin geometry and transparencies. Higher is the resolution worse are the artifacts in such scenario. For example Horizon Dawn Zero has a lot more jaggies at 2160p than in the performance mode which stays around 1600p. Crazy personal take, but I prefer CBR resolution in a mid step resolution as 1600/1800 than the fucking aliasing in Horizon or Death Stranding I seen there at 2160 cbr. Sure sharpness is worse but sometimes jaggies are really unbearable.

 

[Warablo]

Wasn't the biggest fan of The Witcher 3 engine, but still a great game. Their engine just feels old school. I'll let gamebyro engine slide because at least that let's you interact with tons of objects.

 

[alabtrosMyster]

The new version of ID tech they used to make Doom Eternal, it just seems to push so mush out of any hardware it's on!

I’m not fan of Unity. Most games have performance problems on it.

It seems to have too much overhead for consoles.

 

[Tschumi]

Yeah mgsv fox engine, decima, i like dice with battlefront 2, is that an engine?

 

[Shelookdlvl18]

Upon reading the thread title, I wonder how many people scrambled over to Google to search "Game engines that are 1337 EXCLUSIVE to the one and only.... Console thats made by Sony. PS4, PS5, PSVR?

I'd bet there's at least a couple.

 

[Hawking Radiation]

Whatever is running Doom and Doom Eternal.

That shit can run at 1080p/120FPS on a toaster.

 

[archangelmorph]

I find these threads really silly.

Most of the points of comparison here are nothing to do with the engine itself and are far more a product of a talented art + engineering team.

Whilst game engines facilitate and empower that to a lesser or greater extent, it does so in a manner wholly opaque to anything visible to the player on-screen. the only exception to that being the use of provided lighting models, stock libraries of shaders, materials, sounds, textures, models etc, but you can bet your ass that all the best looking games would roll quite a lot of that either bespoke or heavily tailored.

In short, game engines are tools to empower teams with flexibility and productivity, everything beyond that is the product of the magic the team itself can eek out of it.

(Case-in-point: Horizon: Zero Dawn is a beautiful game. But contrast that with what Kojima's team were able to do with the same Decima engine for Death Stranding in terms of art direction, lighting, BDRF material work and geom sculpting and there is a bit of a visual gulf between the two)

 

[nemiroff]

Armchair development has its limits.. I mean, come on, I can't see how anyone but a developer (or judging by his/hers statements) with multi-engine experience can answer this. Merely looking at games and determine whether an engine is "good or bad" is one hell of a stretch. There's an ocean of depth here, and looking at the end result is only the surface.

 

[Greeno]

RAGE is really impressive, the physics engine it employs is just second to none (Euphoria+some customizations). You can say what you want about the design of modern Rockstar games, but you simply cannot argue against the visuals and physics brought forth by RAGE. The only disadvantage the RAGE engine may have is rumored to be how hard it is to work with.

Still, Unreal Engine takes the cake in terms of best engines (it is easy to come up with something impressive because of how easy and streamlined the engine is).

 

[Fredrik]

Agreed here on Team Ninja, whatever engine it is they use or used to use. IIRC it IS literally the 'dead or alive engine' probably v3 or v4 by now. I remember an old AF Ninja Gaiden interview where they said the game is running on the DoA engine, just with some modifications.

Yet, DOA6 isn’t even running at locked 60fps at 4K on Xbox Series X, lots of stutter.

My vote goes to whatever iD is using.

Shin’en is doing crazy things with their engine too.

 

[Arioco]

CBR means it runs at half resolution natively for example 3200x1600p is 1900x1600p temporarily reconstructed via checkboard. Checkboard typically doesn't works for thin geometry and transparencies. Higher is the resolution worse are the artifacts in such scenario. For example Horizon Dawn Zero has a lot more jaggies at 2160p than in the performance mode which stays around 1600p. Crazy personal take, but I prefer CBR resolution in a mid step resolution as 1600/1800 than the fucking aliasing in Horizon or Death Stranding I seen there at 2160 cbr. Sure sharpness is worse but sometimes jaggies are really unbearable.

You're right, the game looks more jagged in Resolution Mode than it does in Performance Mode, but I always thought it has to do with the DoF, it's something more noticeable when a character contrast against a strong DoF.

Performance Mode above, Resolution Mode below:

I really can't see this kind of difference in-game during normal gameplay, I actually think the game looks crisper in Resolution Mode, but the cutscenes may look kind of ugly. Look at this arm, for God's sake!

 

[Mhmmm 2077]

No one said REDengine yet. The most impressive thing for me was how in cyberpunk 2077 you can change graphical settings and it's already done. No applying, no waiting, no restarting. That's it, instant changes.

Worst? Either """creation engine""" or TellTale Tool, thankfully the latter won't be used ever again.

 

[K.S v2.0]

Yet, DOA6 isn’t even running at locked 60fps at 4K on Xbox Series X, lots of stutter.

My vote goes to whatever iD is using.

Shin’en is doing crazy things with their engine too.

Isn't DoA6 on UE4?... Or not?... I honestly can't remember.

 

[kadab]

Very very impressed with the Ghost of Tsushima engine.

 

[K.S v2.0]

Very very impressed with the Ghost of Tsushima engine.

No idea what engine it is but they seriously pulled off some absolute wizardry with this game. Especially the fast travel. I have never ever seen a fast travel in an open world game of this magnitude load so fucking fast even on mechanical HDDs.

 

[TLZ]

I like the Toyota engine. Very efficient and impressive for the price. Nice looking end product too.

 

[Black_Stride]

Whatever engine doom eternal runs on impressed me,

Outer worlds engine is trash

Outer Worlds is Unreal Engine?
You think Unreal Engine 4 is trash?

 

[cireza]

Obsolete : any Falcom game.

 

[INC]

Source 2 running alyx, looks great even on low end spec

 

[M1chl]

I am fond of these engines:
- 4A Engine
- Forza Engine (clearly showing it's flexibility on FS2020)
- Re:engine
- ID Tech 7
- FOX engine

I am sort of 'meh'
- Remedy's Northlight

I am particalury not fond
- Whatever garbage Blizzard is using
- Valve engine, even with impressive showing on Alyx is outdated
- Gamebryo
- Unity
- RED engine 3(simply unacceptable CPU usage for what it does - or rather does no do)

 

[Damian Monroe]

I've always been impressed with the PC Engine what that little white beauty can do awesome

 

[K.S v2.0]

Obsolete : any Falcom game.

They may be using an outdated engine but their games still look beautiful and have some of the best art direction around. Proof in the pudding that an engine isn't everything.

 

[Black_Stride]

Isn't DoA6 on UE4?... Or not?... I honestly can't remember.

Nah.
They "scraped" the actually good engine (Soft Engine) that they used for DoA5 to make/work on whatever the crap engine that runs DoA6 is called.
Absolute mess of an engine, it isnt anywhere near as performant as the Soft Engine for what they want from it.
Unless im mistaken I think its based on the Dynasty Warriors engine the one they used for the PC version of DoA5.

I believe it can be brute forced into running well.
But the Soft Engine just worked better.

Never fix what aint broken.
Soft Engine was a terrible name, but atleast the engine worked well on consoles.

Me thinks you were thinking of "every other fighting game" thats now running on Unreal Engine.

 

[K.S v2.0]

Nah.
They "scraped" the actually good engine (Soft Engine) that they used for DoA5 to make/work on whatever the crap engine that runs DoA6 is called.
Absolute mess of an engine, it isnt anywhere near as performant as the Soft Engine for what they want from it.
Unless im mistaken I think its based on the Dynasty Warriors engine the one they used for the PC version of DoA5.

I believe it can be brute forced into running well.
But the Soft Engine just worked better.

Never fix what aint broken.
Soft Engine was a terrible name, but atleast the engine worked well on consoles.

Me thinks you were thinking of "every other fighting game" thats now running on Unreal Engine.

Ah thassit... yeah. They basically DID bruteforce it for DoA6 considering it runs 'heavier' than DoA5, which was an older engine but still ran smooth AF. On PC its not an issue coz we're basically bruteforcing it as well with raw hardware muscle, but it makes sense that it runs like shit on consoles.

If anything, that stupid Soft Engine would be fine if DoA were just an eroge... apparently DoAX Venus Vacation runs just fine coz its basically a gravure sim.

 

[Miles708]

The engine Bubblebath Engine used in Dreams doesn't even use polygons and has an impressive lighting management.
It also updates everything in real-time as you create everything, on top of being the most user-friendly piece of software out there.

From a technical viewpoint it's, more or less, a total miracle.

 

[Black_Stride]

Ah thassit... yeah. They basically DID bruteforce it for DoA6 considering it runs 'heavier' than DoA5, which was an older engine but still ran smooth AF. On PC its not an issue coz we're basically bruteforcing it as well with raw hardware muscle, but it makes sense that it runs like shit on consoles.

If anything, that stupid Soft Engine would be fine if DoA were just an eroge... apparently DoAX Venus Vacation runs just fine coz its basically a gravure sim.

I can almost guarantee if DoA6 was running on the old engine, it would have tag battle and run much better on consoles.
I dont even think this new engine is that much of an upgrade from the old one graphically.
So they could probably have made the game look better too.

 

[EverydayBeast]

Assassins Creed Odyssey I’m not going to evaluate the engine I don’t know what the hell they did but the day to night chance, detail etc. I would have thought it’s a next gen game.

 

[Fbh]

Good ones:
-ID Tech. I play PC stuff on a laptop with a 1050ti so I'm used to having to crank down visuals for 60fps or just lock stuff at 30. But with ID tech you get both nice visuals while maintaining a locked 60fps no matter how crazy the action gets.
-On a similar Note, whatever custom version of Unreal The Coalition uses for Gears is also similarly impressive in how nice it looks even on weak hardware while still pushing 60fps.
-RE Engine offers a good mix of visuals and performance even on low end hardware. But I really dislike the way human characters look on it. They all have this weird uncanny valley look that I don't get from most other popular engines.
- Decima. Not sure about how it's on PC but Horizon looked amazing on Ps4 all while being open world and performing well.

Not necessarily "bad ones", but some I've found disappointing:
-Not sure what happened to Northlight with Control. Ray Tracing killing performance I understand, but even with Ray Tracing disabled I found the game to perform badly despite not doing anything that impressive. With no Ray Tracing I actually thought Quantum Break looked nicer AND performed better.
- Not sure what their engine is called but Monolith Soft has been visually disappointing this gen. With both previous Xenoblade games they stood out for offering some of the nicest visuals on their respective systems. Xenoblade Chronicles X in particular looked really nice for its time so I was expecting that trend to continue with Switch. But Xenoblade 2 looks like they really struggled to get it running. It's 720 while docked which is disappointing (no improvement over what they were doing on WiiU) and then it turns into an blurry mess in handheld mode.

 

[K.S v2.0]

I can almost guarantee if DoA6 was running on the old engine, it would have tag battle and run much better on consoles.
I dont even think this new engine is that much of an upgrade from the old one graphically.
So they could probably have made the game look better too.

Totally agree. The old engine lacked all the fancy FIZEEKS options and all that other BS but it was optimized and lightweight enough to run smoothly on potatoasters. The new Soft Engine is akin to RTX. All flash and flair at a too-high cost for not enough justifiable return.... But of course it will become a non issue once last gen is gone, etc.

Whether or not there'll even be a DoA7 though is yet to be seen considering 6 was a total flop.

 

[DOSS216]

Best:

Rage engine

 

[kuncol02]

Most impressive in what? Graphics? Ability to create big open worlds? Extensibility? Versatility? There is none which would check all that marks.
I'm for example still super impressed how open for mods Bethesda engine is.I'm not sure if there is any comparable engine in that regard.

If Avowed ends up looking like it does in the trailer

It don't matter how it will look if they will not release tools like Bethesda is doing. It would simply be not comparable.

Even Source, which was specifically designed as a pre-built package of libraries, etc., to be purchased by other studios, was absolutely awful when Troika touched it and they were the first non-Valve devs to do so.

Troika was using unfinished pre-release version of Source engine. Other developers never had much problems with it (outside of it's limitations due to it's age) Dark Messiah and Titanfall were working fine.

 

[kuncol02]

You're right, the game looks more jagged in Resolution Mode than it does in Performance Mode, but I always thought it has to do with the DoF, it's something more noticeable when a character contrast against a strong DoF.

Could you please learn how to post pictures? What my mouse scroll did to you?

 

[lostinblue]

Most good and horrid engines have been named one way or the other at this point but nobody has mentioned Cry Engine.

I think I only played games using it this gen, I wasn't a PC gamer back when crysis came out, nor did I play a lot of FPS's on PS3/X360.

It's lacking games, investment and art talent, but it has a good technical implementation going for it and the ability to do some really interesting things. I usually like the image quality, and light/material properties of the engine.

I would like to see it used more often.

Wasn't the biggest fan of The Witcher 3 engine, but still a great game. Their engine just feels old school. I'll let gamebyro engine slide because at least that let's you interact with tons of objects.

The engine structure is clearly dated judging how things interact and bug out, Witcher 3 was a massive tour de force, Cyberpunk 2077 even more so.

It's impressive that they managed to take it so far, but their engine inner workings makes me have pity of their workers. Crunch is inevitable with that structure.

 

[kuncol02]

Cry Engine.

I think M1chl would have something interesting to say about that. Especially that he was working on Kingdom Come and he didn't put it into his list.
Also:

Xbox |OT| Power Your Dreams

Merry Christmas Xbox fans. Easily the best thread on NEOGAF. In a sea of Xbox negativity it's nice to have a safe harbor.

www.neogaf.com

 

[LordOfChaos]

This will run over 60fps on a turd. With all the particle effects, shading, and respectable material work going on, it seems very efficient.

Needs some work: Control's engine. It never seems to not be blurry.

 

[Hydroxy]

I love RE engine, Fox and Decima. I dislike Unity.

 

[Petaya Berry]

What a weird thread.

I don't think the OP or most of the people here knows what an egine is or can do.
So I think that you should research first.

This is a very technical question and, let's be honest, people here doesn't even know the difference between a roguelike and roguelite...

 

[johntown]

I love RE engine, Fox and Decima. I dislike Unity.

I was thinking of all these. Great engines that look incredible and run very well.

I would add ID Tech to this list.

I dislike Bethesda's Creation/Gamebyro engine.

 

[lostinblue]

I think M1chl would have something interesting to say about that. Especially that he was working on Kingdom Come and he didn't put it into his list.
Also:

Xbox |OT| Power Your Dreams

Merry Christmas Xbox fans. Easily the best thread on NEOGAF. In a sea of Xbox negativity it's nice to have a safe harbor.

www.neogaf.com

That's very interesting kuncol02 . I always wanted to play Kingdom Come and those tidbits put it on my radar again.

Interesting that M1chl didn't list it on neither the good, bad, nor the meh engines on his list.

As for Cry Engine have no doubt it's been a little neglected over the years (graphed on portions doesn't surprise me a lot), but UE3 also sucked once and took a lot of listening to licensees requirements (and hiring people) to get right, I think they've missed a profitable business model, made some bad decisions (letting Amazon fork it for their Lumberyard Engine thing?), probably many others and lack resources/long term priorities. I think they're missing clients, but their engine is certainly better than the "bad ones" named on this thread.

Fox Engine looked really good but I heard it was really hard to work with.

- Not sure what their engine is called but Monolith Soft has been visually disappointing this gen. With both previous Xenoblade games they stood out for offering some of the nicest visuals on their respective systems. Xenoblade Chronicles X in particular looked really nice for its time so I was expecting that trend to continue with Switch. But Xenoblade 2 looks like they really struggled to get it running. It's 720 while docked which is disappointing (no improvement over what they were doing on WiiU) and then it turns into an blurry mess in handheld mode.

Xenoblade 2 came out too early to have the optimization and polish it needed to run better than "good enough", they ported the XBCX engine but then got overly ambitious with the effects they wanted to pull on top, specially because the console has a handheld mode. I also think XBC2 has worse art direction to be honest.

XBC2: Torna The Golden Country expansion runs better.

As for why they didn't patch XB2, it' because it's probably not as simple as updating the engine version. They would have to backport it.

 

[Arioco]

Could you please learn how to post pictures? What my mouse scroll did to you?

I already know how to post pictures: by using the "post picture" option available, which I did.

What makes you think I care about your f*uck*ng mouse? Sorry dude, not interested in your life, it's too sad for my taste.

 

[mansoor1980]

it depends on the developer rather than the engine, but RAGE is the most impressive overall game engine .

 

[kuncol02]

I already know how to post pictures: by using the "post picture" option available, which I did.

What makes you think I care about your f*uck*ng mouse? Sorry dude, not interested in your life, it's too sad for my taste.

Tell my one thing. Why every time someone makes post with lots of huge pictures it's some Sony fanboy who has to proof everyone that some Sony game has best graphics?

 

[Arioco]

Tell my one thing. Why every time someone makes post with lots of huge pictures it's some Sony fanboy who has to proof everyone that some Sony game has best graphics?

Like Cloud Strife would say... Not interested.

 

[PSlayer]

Yeah mgsv fox engine, decima, i like dice with battlefront 2, is that an engine?

frostbite i think? it's not a very flexible engine but as far as first person shooter goes, it's very efficient.

 

[Sygma]

Fun Fact, Mario Rabbids was made on Snowdrop



Yeah, tell you everything you need to know about Art Direction, they used an improved engine but the game ended looking worse because of the un-inspired Art and setting.

Division 2 is way, way better looking than the first and its not even close to be honest, but it all comes together only with HDR on. Transformative point of view for sure, just like in Horizon Zero Dawn