Well played UT3 demo.

I have only AMD dual core 2.4 if i remember well
GE Force 7600 GT orr GTS ??
2Go Ram and Vista

It runs pretty well on 1024*768.
I can push to 1280*1024 it runs not smooth but not bad : perhaps some 25 FPS i don't know ??
No big slow down at 1024*768 , we can say it runs lots better than any indie engine could do with that good amount of geometry,animations, effects, shaders all at screen in same time

If you play offline and look closely at textures, you will see some good tricks
like detailled textures used with specular and normal map above some diffuses textures.
Integrated lightmaps.

- the base floor on big maps, is simple multitexturing terrain without normal/specular, but the moutain cliffs are meshses with normal/specular.

- the engine uses some pretty glow effects also

- in 1024*768 ,textures at high : weapons looks incredibly detailled,
but the engine i'm sure uses LOD very well on vehivules, characters indeed.

I just can say in fact it's not incredible :
it's only Normal shader/specular/glow and scene Bloom/Hdr very weel used.

after that the engine have pretty optimisations, like i'm sure their evolved
BSP system combined with terrain.

But the BIG thing is the game is TOP NOTCH 3D ART.
nothing else , the levels blow you out , caus they are incredibly beautifull.

Some vehicules, outdoor buildings are INCREDIBLE 3D ART, that normal/specular shaders just bring up

I don't think we even see in indie domain just one vehicule/building as good as their ones

I'm a bit disappointed about characters, detailled,texture also, but the game runs too fats to see anything.
Yeah the characters are not incredible at all in game (the demo), perhaps better in complete game ??

Well just can say , powerfull/fast Next Gen engine,using shaders that indie
engines uses.
But UT3 is lot of tools , optimisations, easy Classes code,physics you won't
have together in indie domain

Again GREAT 3D ART MASTERPIECE on levels and vehicules,weapons
(but too fast game , far from some BattelField 2 strategy, but can be very very fun)
Just try it

i guess it wont run here on my xp,gf6800, 1GB ram, right?

btw, why do those mtf's put it on a pay to download server? isnt it available anywhere for free?

The beta demo is free to download anywhere , no key needed
i think you can run it on your computer ,
you can adjust , texture size , detail geometry etc ..
if you have standard shaders: normal/specular that any old Piw shader V2 or perhaps older (1.4) can run , it should run.

Lot less beautifull , but it should run

Just watch some screen capture over the net of the demo , to see what you can have on a good pc.

For my part , even if i find it less more eye and colours catching ,
i will prefer to play Call of Duty 4 (and it's great multiplayer mode)

gf 6800 and 7600 gs equal each other in rendering speed, and 1 gig ram should be enough. try it. i have a gf 6800 myself and didn't yet run into a game that didn't work on it with at least medium detail.

I downloaded it, and was rather disappointed with the graphics. It doesn't look like many of the screenshots released previously.

Here is one of previous screenshots:




Here is one of the demo(settings maxed):



And this isn't the worst shot of the demo. In some indoor areas, it looks really bad, with simple geometry and muddy stretched textures. There is no AA, so you will notice many jaggies. The colors are also, seemingly, missing. In the three levels, it seemed to be all greys, browns, blacks, and a big smear effect on the screen. Many of the shadows are low res when looked at.

I guess I'm a bit disappointed, being a big UT fan, so I'm thinking this is due to it being a beta demo and the final version will be clear and have levels with colors. On the plus side, I liked the control, although, everything else felt the same(same weapons, ect.). So the graphics are going to have to pull me in... to play the same game aside from different levels and some more vehicles again.

I agree with William. The textures look muddy and blurry in some areas of the demo. And I even disliked the gameplay. The car ctf level has some nice buildings but is very straight and simple and offers no strategic options. The graphics are not comparable to Bioshock.

If I compare it to Enemy Territory Quake Wars then I find ETQW the better choice: better gameplay (more strategic and team-oriented) and better graphics (textures look way more sharp, Mega-texture delivers the most detailed terrains ever, characters and vehicles are better).

But if you like simple Deathmatch games then UT3 will be the better choice.

At the end I realized that id-Software is still in the market and could possibly beat U3 with their new id-Tech 5 engine (did you see the Rage-demo video?).

Hummm ...
I don't know but some outdoors in UT3 are great 3D art , beautifull,
i agree some levels/areas are like Gear of War :
some grey/dark tones colors.

I have played , and i own Quake Wars that uses paging multitextyre for terrain.
The terrain texture are not enought detailled at max , and have some variation , but not as much as i would want.
Im' not impressed at all by their new techno, let's wait for them to push it some more ?

And it seems to be pagined textures for terrains , not for characters, meshes ...
let's wait for them to show us some game using ultra detailled textures on
charcaters / levels ?

I agree with friendly fank ... Ut3 is not much impressive than a crysis or maybe a gears of war ... I was wondering why ...I played bioshock ( I'm not a big fan) and it was a way better ... It's sound stupid since they used the same engine ...

I think this is also goes to show how a game like God of War 2, looks better consistently than one of the latest, most hyped, "next-gen" games. Hopefully most will realize that no matter how great your engine, and the amount of shaders you use, when something doesn't look right, it just doesn't look right. In this case, a game with great style, without shaders plastered on everything, wins.

Well I think you now are a bit unfair - I think UT3 looks just great. The only thing that's bad about William's shot is that the room ist empty. But hey - it's the starting zone you won't do anything else then run out of there so why waste much effort on doing lots of bling bling in there? The "real" battlezone then looks great imo:


Comparing the graphics with games like Bioshock is something you can't do. This here is a Multiplayer Shooter with 32 players running and blasting around and no singeplayer story based campaign pretty much indoors...

For me UT3 graphics are also superior than those of Quake Wars. I was a bit disappointed when seeing Mega Texture in action - from what was said I had expected more but the terrain still looked blurry when you're not flying. Also it wasn't that good performance-wise. UT3 runs incredibly smooth while giving a great visual quality. What I like very much is what you see when starting the game. The game starts ina very low LOD and then moves upwards - completely dynamic. That's just great in comparison to e.g. Quake Wars where you have heavy stuttering when respawning and I think that's one reason of UT's great performance. Although when speaking of Quake Wars' inferior graphics you also have to say that the maps I played there were a lot larger though I think due to UT3's great LOD this wouldn't be a problem THAT big...

To say the truth I also like the game better than Quake Wars. Besides the pro Strogg situation (Icarus, flying drone, siege modes, no weapon reload) Quake Wars was just the new source of ultimate bunny hopping as there is no stamina and you move and jump very fast. Especially as GDF this hopping just sucked as you don't have that much ammo in the assault rifles and keep reloading and reloading. Especially hitting those damn Icarus flying suit was a pain. All this isn't a big problem in UT3 as you just keep on firing and firing and the characters also don't move or jump that fast. This also seems to be some development into the original UT's direction as 2003 and 2004 were pretty fast...

Enjoy your meal
Toast