The next generation consoles like Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4 are set to offer a lot of integrated and added features, owing to the power both devices have under the hood. While consoles are said take a few years to mature with the most visually rich titles arriving near the end of a certain console’s life-cycle, it has been stated that this may not necessarily be the case for the Xbox One and PS4.
Speaking to Gamingbolt, Umbra's director of developer relations, Thomas Puha, talked about the prospects of next generation engines like Unreal Engine 4, Frostbite 3, and RedENGINE 3 on the next generation consoles, and the kind of output we might expect from them.
“Those are all very powerful, well thought out engines with differing characteristics reflecting the needs of their respective developers. Obviously, from our standpoint, we’d like Umbra 3 to be in all those engines! We have some insight into the REDengine as we work with CD Projekt and those guys are all awesome in what they do and fun to work with,” Puha stated. “You are going to be very impressed by The Witcher 3.”
"You only need to look at the trailers of games like Battlefield 4, The Witcher 3 and Fortnight etc to see how powerful those engines are and let me tell you, developers are only beginning to be able to utilize the potential. There’s a long, long way to go. I think most people will be a bit disappointed by the graphical leap in next-gen games at launch and early on, even though you are gonna see a lot of 60 fps games, but give it a year or two and you will be blown away.”
On a similar note, Lead support engineer at Umbra, Sampo Lappalainen also joined the conversation when asked about the “necessity of occlusion culling in a game like The Witcher 3.” For those who are not aware of Umbra, it is a software used by developers such as CD Projekt RED for efficiently generating worlds in games like The Witcher 3.
“Occlusion culling is absolutely crucial in nearly every game that’s 3D. The larger the game worlds are, the more of them are hidden at any given time so the benefits of doing occlusion culling are increasingly bigger as the game worlds grow. There is no way Witcher 3 would be able to run without some kind of occlusion culling,” Lappalainen stated.
Both Xbox One and PS4 are currently set for a release this fall.
