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This is a thread about the Worst/Best Graphics Engines.

I rather like X-Com's battlescape. It's great. I don't like UFO: Enemy Unknown's geoscape. It gets the job done, barely, but the map doesn't even really show the kind of terrain I should expect in the battle. Those are the best and worst graphics engines (and they were actually separate exeutables, heh) of all the squad-based tactical combat/strategy games released on 1994, which is what I assume this thread is about.


Seriously speaking, what are we supposed to talk about?

I think Unreal Engines graphics are good. Also Crytek and CryEngine.

Gamebryo is largely blamed for the instability and low performance of Fallout 3 and Oblivion, so that could be a candidate for worst graphics engine. Also, Torque 3D used to be cutting-edge and important when it was used for Tribes 2, but is now largely irrelevant.

The best graphics engines seem pretty similar, with only a few distinct specialties. ID Tech 5 has its unique megatexture feature, so every surface has a unique texture that is drawn in a single rendering pass: no need for blending or decals. GeoMod 2.5 has really spectacular building destruction that runs smoothly on console hardware. The Avalanche and RAGE engines have great streaming open-world rendering. Unreal Engine has quite polished editing tools, so it is a very popular choice for studios that don't want to write their own engines. Anvil has an efficient system for simulating and rendering large crowds of NPCs.

That's quite a mouth-full there David
To be honest I think Phoenix is more than descent as an Engine, it's got very nice graphics, and is very easy to use.

Doesn't the Unreal engine have problems with slow texture loading and pop-in? Or is that more on the fault of the developers using the engine?

Grayswandir wrote:Doesn't the Unreal engine have problems with slow texture loading and pop-in? Or is that more on the fault of the developers using the engine?

Most devs that tend to use Unreal modify it allot, that's probably why.