How the 3D engine is changing the world

[JeGX]

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/dec/11/3d-engine-videogame-technology

The Unreal Engine, created by Epic Games, contains a breathtaking 2.5m lines of code – as Tim Sweeney, technical director: "That's roughly comparable to the complexity of a whole operating system a decade ago."

"Game development is at the cutting edge in many disciplines," says Sweeney. "The physics in modern games includes rigid body dynamics and fluid simulation algorithms that are more advanced than the approaches described in research papers."

[JeGX]

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/dec/14/games-gameculture

It's not the figurative beauty of yore – the iconic charm of Pac-Man, the elegiac simplicity of the vector-mapped space craft in Elite. Modern games are edging toward photo-realism; indeed, through technologies like mimetic interfaces and augmented reality, they are encroaching on reality itself. And at times they are breathtakingly close.

But here is the minor tragedy at the heart of modern games: no matter how astonishing they look, players will never see one of the most beautiful components: the 3D engine.

Nowadays, developers spend several years developing one engine which then powers all of their games. These technologies are so important; they have become brands in their own right. They're given exciting macho names like EGO, RAGE and OGRE and whenever a new title is announced, the 3D engine will be there listed among the key selling points.

"In other areas, we're still stuck in the Stone Age due to ingrained technologies. The C++ programming language, used in all modern games, was hastily conceived in the 1980s as an extension to the 1970s C programming language. Many of the problems that plague computers today - security vulnerabilities, viruses, and so on, can be traced to problems in this language."