Epic Games' Unreal graphics engine has become one of the most popular in modern gaming, used in a wide range of titles to achieve various levels of realism. Graphical fidelity is an important topic as we move on to the next generation of gaming hardware, as gamers and designers alike hope to see games getting the most out of the increased console and PC horsepower.
Unreal Engine 4, the next iteration of the software, is looking to deliver on that hope, and the future looks promising. Video demonstrations of the engine from GDC show off impressive graphics and a suite of next-gen features, which we can expect to make their way into our games in the near future.
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The Unreal Engine 4 features trailer (below) in particular outlines the new features and gives us a preview of what games that use the engine may look like moving forward. If you're not knowledgeable on the technical terms, phrases such as "Temporal Anti-Aliasing", "GPU Particle Simulation" and "Dynamic Navigation Mesh" that appear in the trailer may blur together for you, but the visual demonstrations of these effects should get the point across.
Lighting and reflection effects seem to have been given the biggest boosts by my eye, and the scenes showing the features related to lighting look quite good.
Of course, the level of fidelity in the demo shouldn't be taken to fully represent how games will appear (running a demo meant only to look good is different than a game in motion running at a steady frame rate), but it should give you an idea of the future improvements. Other videos showing off the development tools and specific lighting effects are available as well.
