They added Scaleform, POM and improved tonemapping. What did they remove?

You know. 4 months for adding PoM, tonemapping and scaleform.. It's well. Long. (just FYI, Tonemapping and PoM was in Crysis2 Mod SDK, and it doesn't seem to work much diffrent ;p)

What's about new terrain system, and fixing accuracy problems for 16km2> terrains ? Not that I will use it. But some people will. And stating, that "we don't need it, so you don't need it, change your game design". It's not really an answer.
What's about node-based shader editor ? I't bad I can't pack textures into RPG channels. I cloud use it to do some heavy optimizations on texture usage.
What's about in editor vertex painting ? (combined with RGBA texture packing, it would prove to be extreme memory optimization option).
Especially because changing coordinate system to something more accurate can't be that hard..

What's about third party integration ? Yes. I'm still pointing at NVIDIA APEX.

It's bit sad. But only real CryEngine3 advantage over the rest, is it's real time lighting system.
Other things are at best equal, or just missing ;p.

Unreal on comparison, have very poor lighting (thous it's very configurable, if you know editor), but have lot's of functionality and integrations, that are available for you, without much effort.

As "iniside" told you - POM, SSDO, Improved Tonemapping is OLD features and available in Crysis 2 Mod Tools. Scaleform is good, but only 1 new feature???? Also i`m talking about CryEngine 3 functionality! it`s not just "lets add support for another third party software", its about internal features: Second UV set support, advanced shadow control, mesh painter, mesh simplification (lod), advanced terrain system, non-uniform scale/mirroring and much more.

PS. My personal opinion: If they wanna compete with UDK, they should introduce much more than just a Scaleform because its already available for free for UDK users since 2010.

advanced shadow control? The only thing would maybe be no limit to cascades (to the bottom as well), but apart from that? Really not much one can improve in this field. The terrain they could probably improve, yes.
Non-uniform scaling. Would be nice if they could finally update proxies as well when scaling that way.

Everything else from what i see on your list is nice to have, but nothing that changes a whole lot.

Overall the tools are a big plus for UDK, most importantly the material editor, but I think other features have much more impact on people making a decision.
Namely:
- iOS, Flash support
- easy to-get-into- scripting language with
- huge recources for everyone to learn
- better looking results at better framerates.
- Easy deployment of game
- proven commercial royalty system.
- support and marketing by Epic if the game is somewhat good
- history of regular and/or substantial updates.

For artists who want to show their work the lighting and huge material flexibilty make Unreal the no1 choice.
For indies the community and super-large tutorial base make it easy to start.
There is no uncertainty about performance as much as in CryEngine. Once it's baked it's baked and it runs well on most machines.

Really? What about mesh painting, mesh simplification (lods), fracture tool, second uv set support, fbx import, dx11 support and etc?

Apart from second UV set, those aren't engine features but tool/UI related things. Smoother workflow is always nice, but mesh painting, LODs, breakables can be done already and the end result is what matters.

Do we really need get back to discussion how superior mesh painting inside editor is compared to DCC app ? ;p.
edit:
Actually I have proof for you:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthre ... 682&page=9
Good luck doing something like this in CE3, without Mesh Paint and Node Shader Editor. (remember this guy using only two textures RGBA and normal map).
And btw. We talk Engine in UE4, but we really mean entire toolset ;p.

Сan be done already? Ok. I have exported house - how i can break it inside Sandbox? how i can create LOD for that building inside Sandbox?

What does Tor Frick's scifi scene have to do with mesh painting? Clever UVs and ability to use single channels as textures sure. Node-based shaders aren't a requirement either if you allow single channels in the material workflow.

Plastix: Read it again and you might understand. You can make breakable houses and LODs already using the Cryengine toolset. And yes it's not as flexible and fast (I already said that) but it's possible with the tools we have if you spend the time working on your art instead of whining about lacking features. To quote Thomy, "nothing that changes a whole lot".


I'd be the first in line to paint blend layers in Sandbox. While that's not possible, it takes a few seconds longer to do that in 3ds Max and re-export.

Lots. Different colors of meshes, are achieved trough painting them inside editor. Sure, you can export 123 version of them same mesh, with different vertex painting. And they will 123x more space than single mesh..

Node editor is also must have. Because he packed 4 textures into single file, and then extracted them inside material. How do you want to do this without shader code, or shader editor ? ;s

Anyway. I'm surprised you defending inferior solution ;p.

Ah yes, he had different color variations of some meshes. Could be done without multiple meshes by a duplicate material with a different hue btw.
Add R,G,B,A checkboxes next to the texture map slots in the current material editor? Lots of alternatives for that one. Features like that need to be added to the node-based UI too just the same - 3ds Max has identical functionality for the Slate material editor and the Compact material editor. Slate is just a lot more intuitive.
I'm not. Hear me say: UE3 toolset is better. I'm just saying most stuff CAN be done the old way (if you cut the whining and spend the time working) while we wait for the improvements to the Sandbox UI and tools.

Once again: How i can do that inside Sandbox??? Maybe i`ve miss some nice tools inside SB3.



It`s possible only inside 3rd party apps. And currently this will be huge amount of work.

Oh. Then we end with. let me count.. bayzlion slots for textures, because I guess each slot will be needed for each chanell, for each texture type.
But that not just that. You can create your custom shaders. Let's say you want SSS. How do you do this in FreeSDK ? (just an example).

And slate editor is big no no. Don't like it. Seems I'm just to old ;p (and I found it odd, because I love UDK shader editor )


More materials, are even worse than more meshes. More materials > more draw calls > less fps.
The entire point of this scene is to use least possible things to make it .

Just a simple feature: Second (independant) UV set support can change your workflow to almost 180 degrees. Example: You can use ONLY tileble and reusable textures and achieve really great looking result because with second UV set - you can generate lightmaps for your scenes, meshes and etc. You can use UV stamps/maps as edge highlights (specular), unique detail maps, round corners shader and many more. Sometimes even low quality AO maps can drastically change visuals and overall perception of your environment.

Its looks like you dont know what is artist-friendly workflow. Just an example: I wanna try different saturation level for my texture - i should go to PS, change it and re-export my texture. I wanna try another one - all over again. Just a simple features like saturation, contrast and etc. can save a lot of artist time.



You can wait forever for all modern features. Maybe somebody from Crytek will found these features quite useful and they decide to add. them in the next update.



PS. I`m using CE2/3 for my personal needs. And if Crytek wont add any new features - it`s ok for me. (IMHO) But if Epic Games introduce real time lightng system in UE4 - this will be very bad for CE3 (cuz this is the only visible advantage of this engine). Without advanced functionality CE3 can become quite useless. Why should developers use CE3? They can use UE4 with way much more functionality and also real time lighting system.

I miss SSR , hope it comes with DX11