First-person shooter engine
Encyclopedia
A first-person shooter engine is a video game engine
specialized for simulating 3D environments for use in a first-person shooter
video game. First-person refers to the view where the players see the world from the eyes of their characters. Shooter refers to games which revolve primarily around wielding firearms and killing other entities in the game world, either NPCs
or other players.
The development of the FPS graphic engines is characterized by a steady increase in technologies, with some breakthroughs. Attempts at defining distinct generations lead to arbitrary choices of what constitutes a highly modified version of an 'old engine' and what is a brand new engine.
The classification is complicated as game engines blend old and new technologies. Features considered advanced in a new game one year, become the expected standard the next year. Games with a combination of both older and newer features are the norm. For example Jurassic Park: Trespasser
(1998) introduced physics to the FPS genre, which didn't become common until around 2002. Red Faction
(2001) featured destructible walls and ground
, something still not common in engines years later.
.
There are two possible claimants for the first FPS, Maze War
and Spasim
. Maze War was developed in 1973 and involved a single player making his way through a maze of corridors rendered using a fixed perspective. Multiplayer capabilities, where players attempted to shoot each other, were added later and were networked in 1974. Spasim was originally developed in 1974 and involved players moving through a wire-frame 3D universe. Spasim could be played by up to 32 players on the PLATO network.
In 1986, Arsys Software's role-playing shooter WiBArm was an early computer game to feature fully rendered 3D graphics
. It was released for the NEC PC-8801
computer and later ported to MS-DOS
by Brøderbund
. In contrast to other games at the time which were restricted to 90-degree movements, WiBArm's use of 3D polygons allowed full 360-degree movement. Soon afterwards, Arsys used a similar 3D polygonal
graphics engine for Star Cruiser, an early first-person shooter, where all the backgrounds, objects and opponents in the game were rendered in 3D polygons, many years before 3D polygons were widely adopted by the gaming industry. Star Cruiser was released for the PC-8801 in 1988, and ported to the Sega Mega Drive console in 1990. The only other known game to use this game engine was its sequel, Star Cruiser 2, released in 1992, for the PC-9821 and FM Towns
computers.
Developed in-house by Incentive Software
, the Freescape engine is considered to be one of the first proprietary 3D engines to be used for computer games, although the engine was not used commercially outside of Incentive's own titles. The first game to use this engine was the puzzle game Driller in 1987.
2.5D
techniques to draw the environment and sprites
to draw enemies instead of 3D models
. However these games began to use textures
to render the environment instead of simple wire-frame models or solid colors.
Hovertank 3D
, from id Software
, was the first to use this technique in 1990, but was still not using textures
, a capability which was added shortly after on Catacomb 3D
(1991), then with the Wolfenstein 3D engine
which was later used for several other games. Catacomb 3D was also the first game to show the player's hand on-screen, furthering the implication of the player into the character's role.
Wolfenstein 3D
engine was still very primitive. It did not use textures to the floor and ceiling, and the ray casting
restricted walls to a fixed height, and levels were all on the same plane.
Even if it was still not using true 3D, id Tech 1
, used first with Doom (1993) and again from id Software
, removed these limitations. It also first introduced the concept of Binary space partitioning
(BSP). Another breakthrough was the introduction of multiplayer abilities in the engine. However, because it was still using 2.5D, it was impossible to look up and down properly in Doom, and all Doom levels were actually two-dimensional.
Doom's success spawned a lot of games using the same engine or similar techniques, giving them the name of Doom clones. The Build Engine
, used for Duke Nukem 3D
(1996), later removed some of the limitations of id Tech 1, but the techniques used remained the same.
(single-pass texturing, no lighting details) polygon
al objects.
From Software
released King's Field
, a full polygon free roaming first-person real-time action title and strong contender for the first ever such game of this kind, for the Sony
PlayStation
in December 1994. Sega
's 32X
release Metal Head
was a first-person shooter mecha simulation game that used fully texture-mapped
, 3D polygonal graphics
. That same year, Exact released the Sharp X68000
computer game Geograph Seal, a fully 3D polygonal first-person shooter that employed platform game
mechanics and had most of the action take place in free-roaming
outdoor environments rather than the corridor labyrinths of Wolfenstein 3D. The following year, Exact released its successor for the PlayStation
console, Jumping Flash!
, which used the same game engine but adapted it to place more emphasis on the platforming rather than the shooting. The Jumping Flash! series continued to use the same engine.
Dark Forces, released in 1995 by Lucasarts
, has been regarded as one of the first "true 3-D" first-person shooter games. Its engine, the Jedi Engine, was one of the first engines to support an environment in three dimensions: areas can exist next to each other in all three planes, including on top of each other (such as stories in a building). Though most of the objects in Dark Forces are sprites, the game does include support for textured 3D-rendered objects. Hailed as the first successful challenger to Doom and seen as surpassing it in many ways, Dark Forces won the "Game of the Year" award from the magazine PC Gamer in 1994 (even though the game would not be released until 1995??) Another game regarded as one of the first true 3d first-person shooter is Parallax Software
's Descent
.
The Quake engine
(Quake, 1996) used fewer animated sprites and used true 3D geometry and lighting, using elaborate techniques such as Z-buffering
to speed up the rendering. Quake was also the first true-3D game to use a special map design system to preprocess and pre-render the 3D environment: the 3D environment in which the game took place (referred for the first time as a Map) was simplified during the creation of the map to reduce the processing required when playing the game.
Static lightmap
s and 3D light sources were also added in the BSP
files storing the levels, allowing for more realistic lighting.
The first Graphics processing unit
s appeared in the late 1990s, but many games still supported software rendering at that time. id Tech 2 (Quake II
, 1996) was one of the first games to take advantage of hardware accelerated graphics (id Software
later reworked Quake to add OpenGL
support to the game).
GoldSrc
, the engine derived from the Quake engine
by Valve Corporation
for Half-Life (1998), added Direct3D
support, and a skeletal
framework to better render the NPCs
, and also greatly improved the NPCs artificial intelligence
(AI) compared to the Quake engine.
. This card was superior to what 3DFX had to offer at the time, namely Voodoo3
, which only fell short because the lack of T&L. Companies such as Matrox
with their G400
, and S3
with their Savage4
were forced to withdraw from the 3D gaming market during this time period. One year later, ATI
released their Radeon 7200
, a true competing card line.
While all games of this period supported 16-bit color, many were adopting 32-bit color (really 24-bit color with an 8-bit alpha channel) as well. Soon, many benchmark sites began touting 32-bit as a standard. The Unreal Engine
, used in a large number of FPS games since its release, was an important milestone at the time. It used the Glide API
, specifically developed for 3dfx GPUs, instead of OpenGL
. Probably the biggest reason for its popularity was that the engine architecture and the inclusion of a scripting language
made it easy to mod
it. One other improvement of Unreal compared to the previous generation of engines was its networking technology
, which greatly improved the scalability of the engine on multiplayer.
id Tech 3, first used for Quake III Arena
, improved from its predecessor by allowing to store much complex and smoother animations. It also had improved lighting and shadowing
and introduced Shader
s and curved surfaces.
Average Video Hardware requirements: a GPU with hardware T&L such as the DirectX 7.0 GeForce 2 or Radeon 7200
was typically required. The next-generation GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500 were recommended due to their more efficient architecture, though their DirectX 8.0 vertex and pixel shaders were of little use. A handful of games still supported DirectX 6.0 chipsets such as RIVA TNT2
and Rage 128, and software rendering (with an integrated Intel GMA
), though this was apparent that even a powerful CPU could not compensate for the lack of hardware T&L.
Games engines originally developed for the PC
platform, like the Unreal Engine 2.0, started to be adapted for sixth generation consoles
like PlayStation 2
or GameCube
, those now having the computer power to handle graphic-intensive video games.
, and lighting and shadowing
technologies to become common. Shader technologies included HLSL (for DirectX
), GLSL
(for OpenGL
), or Cg.
This resulted in the obsolescence of DirectX 7.0 graphics chips such as the widespread GeForce 2 and Radeon 7200
, as well as DirectX 6.0 chipsets such as RIVA TNT2
and Rage 128, and integrated on-board
graphics accelerators
. Until this generation of games, a powerful CPU was able to somewhat compensate for an older video card. Average Video Hardware requirements: minimum was a GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500, strongly recommended was the GeForce FX, Radeon 9700 (or other cards with Pixel shader 2.x support). The Radeon 9700 demonstrated that anti-aliasing
(AA) and/or anisotropic filtering
(AF) could be fully usable options, even in the newest and most demanding titles at the time, and resulted in the widespread acceptance of AA and AF as standard features. AA and AF had been supported by many earlier graphics chips prior to this but carried a heavy performance hit and so most gamers opted not to enable these features.
With these new technologies game engines featured seamlessly integrated indoor/outdoor environments, used shaders for more realistic animations (characters, water, weather effects, etc...), and generally increased realism. The fact that the GPU
performed some of the tasks that were already done by the CPU
, and more generally the increasing processing power available, allowed to add realistic physics effects to the games, for example with the inclusion of the Havok
physics engine in most video games. Physics had been already added in a video game in 1998 with Jurassic Park: Trespasser
, but limited hardware capabilities at the time, and the absence of a middleware
like Havok to handle physics had made it a technical and commercial failure.
id Tech 4, first used for Doom 3
(2004), used an entirely dynamic per-pixel lighting
, whereas previously, 3D engines had relied primarily on pre-calculated per-vertex lighting or lightmap
s and Gouraud shading
. The Shadow volume
approach used in Doom 3 permitted more realistic lighting and shadows, however this came at a price as it could not render soft shadows, and the engine was primarily good indoors. Later this was rectified to work with vast outdoor spaces, with the introduction of MegaTexture
technology in the id Tech 4 engine.
The same year, Valve Corporation
released Half-Life 2
, powered by their new Source engine
. This new engine was notable in that, among other things, it had very realistic facial animations for NPCs
, including what was described as an impressive lip-syncing technology.
like Shader Model 3
or Shader Model 4
, made possible by new graphic chipsets as GeForce 7
or Radeon X1xxx
series, allowed for improvements in graphic effects.
Developers of this era of 3D engines often tout their increasingly photorealistic quality. These engines include realistic shader
-based materials with predefined physics, environments with procedural and vertex shader-based objects (vegetation
, debris, human-made objects such as books or tools), procedural animation
, cinematographic effects (depth of field
, motion blur
, etc.), High dynamic range rendering
, and unified lighting models with soft shadowing and volumetric lighting
.
However, most of engines capable of these effects are evolutions of engines from the previous generation, such as Unreal Engine 3, the Dunia Engine
and CryEngine 2 (evolved from the CryEngine
), or the Source engine
.
The first games using Unreal Engine 3 were released in November 2006, and the first game to use CryEngine 2 (Crysis
) was released in 2007.
(which will be used for the first time with the video games Rage
and then with Doom 4
, and will feature a new Virtual Texturing
technology), and the CryEngine 3, which powers Crysis 2
.
Few companies have discussed future plans for their engines; id Tech 6
, the eventual successor to id Tech 5, is an exception. Preliminary information about this engine which is still in early phases of development tend to show that id Software
is looking toward a direction where ray tracing and classic raster graphics
would be mixed. However, according to John Carmack, the hardware capable of id Tech 6 does not yet exist.
Game engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
specialized for simulating 3D environments for use in a first-person shooter
First-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre that centers the gameplay on gun and projectile weapon-based combat through first-person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits with other...
video game. First-person refers to the view where the players see the world from the eyes of their characters. Shooter refers to games which revolve primarily around wielding firearms and killing other entities in the game world, either NPCs
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
or other players.
The development of the FPS graphic engines is characterized by a steady increase in technologies, with some breakthroughs. Attempts at defining distinct generations lead to arbitrary choices of what constitutes a highly modified version of an 'old engine' and what is a brand new engine.
The classification is complicated as game engines blend old and new technologies. Features considered advanced in a new game one year, become the expected standard the next year. Games with a combination of both older and newer features are the norm. For example Jurassic Park: Trespasser
Jurassic Park: Trespasser
Jurassic Park: Trespasser is a video game released in 1998 for Microsoft Windows after much hype and anticipation. The player assumes the role of Anne, the sole survivor of a plane crash on InGen's "Site B" one year after the events of The Lost World: Jurassic Park...
(1998) introduced physics to the FPS genre, which didn't become common until around 2002. Red Faction
Red Faction
Red Faction is a first-person shooter video game developed by Volition, Inc. and published by THQ. It was released for the PlayStation 2, Microsoft Windows and Mac in 2001. A version for the Nokia N-Gage was developed by Monkeystone Games. The game was also re-developed as a top-down shooter for...
(2001) featured destructible walls and ground
Destructible environment
In video games, the term destructible environment, or terrain deformation, refers to an environment within a game which can be wholly or partially destroyed by the player...
, something still not common in engines years later.
1970s and 1980s: Early FPS graphics engines
Game rendering for this early generation of FPS were already from the first-person perspective and with the need to shoot things, but they were mostly made up using Vector graphicsVector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
.
There are two possible claimants for the first FPS, Maze War
Maze War
Maze War is a video game.Maze War originated or disseminated a number of concepts used in thousands of games to follow, and is considered one of the earliest examples of, or progenitor of, a first-person shooter...
and Spasim
Spasim
Spasim was a 32-player 3D networked computer game by Jim Bowery involving 4 planetary systems with up to 8 players per planetary system, released in March 1974...
. Maze War was developed in 1973 and involved a single player making his way through a maze of corridors rendered using a fixed perspective. Multiplayer capabilities, where players attempted to shoot each other, were added later and were networked in 1974. Spasim was originally developed in 1974 and involved players moving through a wire-frame 3D universe. Spasim could be played by up to 32 players on the PLATO network.
In 1986, Arsys Software's role-playing shooter WiBArm was an early computer game to feature fully rendered 3D graphics
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
. It was released for the NEC PC-8801
NEC PC-8801
The NEC PC-8801 was an early Zilog Z80-based computer exclusively released in Japan, where it became very popular, by NEC Corporation in 1981. It was informally called the "PC-88"....
computer and later ported to MS-DOS
MS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
by Brøderbund
Brøderbund
Brøderbund Software, Inc. was an American maker of computer games, educational software and The Print Shop productivity tools. It was best known as the original creator and publisher of the popular Carmen Sandiego games. The company was founded in Eugene, Oregon, but moved to San Rafael,...
. In contrast to other games at the time which were restricted to 90-degree movements, WiBArm's use of 3D polygons allowed full 360-degree movement. Soon afterwards, Arsys used a similar 3D polygonal
Polygon (computer graphics)
Polygons are used in computer graphics to compose images that are three-dimensional in appearance. Usually triangular, polygons arise when an object's surface is modeled, vertices are selected, and the object is rendered in a wire frame model. This is quicker to display than a shaded model; thus...
graphics engine for Star Cruiser, an early first-person shooter, where all the backgrounds, objects and opponents in the game were rendered in 3D polygons, many years before 3D polygons were widely adopted by the gaming industry. Star Cruiser was released for the PC-8801 in 1988, and ported to the Sega Mega Drive console in 1990. The only other known game to use this game engine was its sequel, Star Cruiser 2, released in 1992, for the PC-9821 and FM Towns
FM Towns
The FM Towns system is a Japanese PC variant, built by Fujitsu from February 1989 to the summer of 1997. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and PC games, but later became more compatible with regular PCs...
computers.
Developed in-house by Incentive Software
Incentive Software
Incentive Software Ltd. was a British video game developer and publisher founded by Ian Andrew in 1983. Programmers included Sean Ellis, Stephen Northcott and Ian's brother Chris Andrew. Later games were based around the company's Freescape rendering engine...
, the Freescape engine is considered to be one of the first proprietary 3D engines to be used for computer games, although the engine was not used commercially outside of Incentive's own titles. The first game to use this engine was the puzzle game Driller in 1987.
Early 1990s: Wireframes to 2.5D Worlds and Textures
Games of this generation are often regarded as Doom clones. They were not capable of full 3D rendering, but used ray castingRay casting
Ray casting is the use of ray-surface intersection tests to solve a variety of problems in computer graphics. It enables spatial selections of objects in ascene by providing users a virtual beam as a visual cue extending...
2.5D
2.5D
2.5D , 3/4 perspective and pseudo-3D are terms used to describe either:* 2D graphical projections and techniques which cause a series of images or scenes to fake or appear to be three-dimensional when in fact they are not, or* gameplay in an otherwise three-dimensional video game that is...
techniques to draw the environment and sprites
Sprite (computer graphics)
In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional image or animation that is integrated into a larger scene...
to draw enemies instead of 3D models
3D modeling
In 3D computer graphics, 3D modeling is the process of developing a mathematical representation of any three-dimensional surface of object via specialized software. The product is called a 3D model...
. However these games began to use textures
Texture mapping
Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...
to render the environment instead of simple wire-frame models or solid colors.
Hovertank 3D
Hovertank 3D
Hovertank 3D is a vehicular combat game developed by id Software and published by Softdisk in April, 1991. It is considered a significant precursor of the first-person shooter genre, made popular by id Software's subsequent releases, Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM...
, from id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
, was the first to use this technique in 1990, but was still not using textures
Texture mapping
Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...
, a capability which was added shortly after on Catacomb 3D
Catacomb 3D
Catacomb 3-D is the third in the Catacomb series of video games , and the first of these games to feature 3D computer graphics...
(1991), then with the Wolfenstein 3D engine
Wolfenstein 3D engine
The Wolfenstein 3D engine is the engine that powers Wolfenstein 3D.The biggest part of the engine is programmed by John Carmack. It is written in C and x86 assembly language. It features graphics , sound , player physics and game control.-Features and limitations:To render the walls in pseudo-3D,...
which was later used for several other games. Catacomb 3D was also the first game to show the player's hand on-screen, furthering the implication of the player into the character's role.
Wolfenstein 3D
Wolfenstein 3D
Wolfenstein 3D is a video game that is generally regarded by critics and gaming journalists as having both popularized the first-person shooter genre on the PC and created the basic archetype upon which all subsequent games of the same genre would be built. It was created by id Software and...
engine was still very primitive. It did not use textures to the floor and ceiling, and the ray casting
Ray casting
Ray casting is the use of ray-surface intersection tests to solve a variety of problems in computer graphics. It enables spatial selections of objects in ascene by providing users a virtual beam as a visual cue extending...
restricted walls to a fixed height, and levels were all on the same plane.
Even if it was still not using true 3D, id Tech 1
Id Tech 1
- See also :*List of game engines*First person shooter engine*id Tech*Doom engine*Doom *Quake engine*Quake *List of first-person shooter engines...
, used first with Doom (1993) and again from id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
, removed these limitations. It also first introduced the concept of Binary space partitioning
Binary space partitioning
In computer science, binary space partitioning is a method for recursively subdividing a space into convex sets by hyperplanes. This subdivision gives rise to a representation of the scene by means of a tree data structure known as a BSP tree.Originally, this approach was proposed in 3D computer...
(BSP). Another breakthrough was the introduction of multiplayer abilities in the engine. However, because it was still using 2.5D, it was impossible to look up and down properly in Doom, and all Doom levels were actually two-dimensional.
Doom's success spawned a lot of games using the same engine or similar techniques, giving them the name of Doom clones. The Build Engine
Build engine
The Build engine is a first-person shooter engine created by Ken Silverman for 3D Realms. Like the Doom engine, the Build engine represents its world on a two-dimensional grid using closed 2D shapes called sectors, and uses simple flat objects called sprites to populate the world geometry with...
, used for Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem 3D
Duke Nukem 3D is a first-person shooter computer game developed by 3D Realms and published by GT Interactive Software. The full version was released for the PC . It is a sequel to the platform games Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II published by Apogee...
(1996), later removed some of the limitations of id Tech 1, but the techniques used remained the same.
Mid 1990s: 3D Models, beginnings of hardware acceleration
In the mid-1990s, game engines recreated true 3D worlds with arbitrary level geometry. Instead of sprites the engines used simply texturedTexture mapping
Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...
(single-pass texturing, no lighting details) polygon
Polygon
In geometry a polygon is a flat shape consisting of straight lines that are joined to form a closed chain orcircuit.A polygon is traditionally a plane figure that is bounded by a closed path, composed of a finite sequence of straight line segments...
al objects.
From Software
From Software
is a Japanese video game company founded in November 1986 known primarily for being the developers of the Armored Core, Demon's Souls, King's Field, Otogi and Tenchu series.-Games:...
released King's Field
King's Field
King's Field is the first game in the King's Field RPG series. Like all its successors, the game is played through first person view in a dark and mysterious, medieval fantasy setting....
, a full polygon free roaming first-person real-time action title and strong contender for the first ever such game of this kind, for the Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...
in December 1994. Sega
Sega
, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...
's 32X
Sega 32X
The Sega 32X, codenamed Project Mars, is an add-on for the Mega Drive/Genesis video game console by Sega. Its aim was to increase the lifespan of the aging Mega Drive/Genesis system, which was facing stiff competition from the SNES...
release Metal Head
Metal Head
Metal Head is a 3D first-person shooter mecha simulation video game developed and published by Sega, and released in 1994 for the Mega Drive's 32X add-on, allowing for fully texture-mapped polygons.- Story :...
was a first-person shooter mecha simulation game that used fully texture-mapped
Texture mapping
Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...
, 3D polygonal graphics
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
. That same year, Exact released the Sharp X68000
Sharp X68000
The Sharp X68000, often referred to as the X68k, is a home computer released only in Japan by the Sharp Corporation. The first model was released in 1987, with a 10 MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, 1 MB of RAM and no hard drive; the last model was released in 1993 with a 25 MHz Motorola 68030...
computer game Geograph Seal, a fully 3D polygonal first-person shooter that employed platform game
Platform game
A platform game is a video game characterized by requiring the player to jump to and from suspended platforms or over obstacles . It must be possible to control these jumps and to fall from platforms or miss jumps...
mechanics and had most of the action take place in free-roaming
Open world
An open world is a type of video game level design where a player can roam freely through a virtual world and is given considerable freedom in choosing how to approach objectives...
outdoor environments rather than the corridor labyrinths of Wolfenstein 3D. The following year, Exact released its successor for the PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...
console, Jumping Flash!
Jumping Flash!
is a video game released in 1995 for the Sony PlayStation. It was developed by Exact Co., Ltd. and Ultra Co., Ltd. and published by Sony Computer Entertainment...
, which used the same game engine but adapted it to place more emphasis on the platforming rather than the shooting. The Jumping Flash! series continued to use the same engine.
Dark Forces, released in 1995 by Lucasarts
LucasArts
LucasArts Entertainment Company, LLC is an American video game developer and publisher. The company was once famous for its innovative line of graphic adventure games, the critical and commercial success of which peaked in the mid 1990s...
, has been regarded as one of the first "true 3-D" first-person shooter games. Its engine, the Jedi Engine, was one of the first engines to support an environment in three dimensions: areas can exist next to each other in all three planes, including on top of each other (such as stories in a building). Though most of the objects in Dark Forces are sprites, the game does include support for textured 3D-rendered objects. Hailed as the first successful challenger to Doom and seen as surpassing it in many ways, Dark Forces won the "Game of the Year" award from the magazine PC Gamer in 1994 (even though the game would not be released until 1995??) Another game regarded as one of the first true 3d first-person shooter is Parallax Software
Parallax Software
Parallax Software was a video game developer best known for creating the Descent series of computer games. Parallax Software was started in 1993 by Matt Toschlog and Mike Kulas. After the release of Descent II in 1997, the company was split to form Volition, Inc. in Champaign, Illinois, and...
's Descent
Descent (video game)
Descent is a 3D first-person shooter video game developed by Parallax Software and released by Interplay Entertainment Corp. in 1995. The game features six degrees of freedom gameplay and garnered several expansion packs...
.
The Quake engine
Quake engine
The Quake engine is the game engine that was written to power 1996's Quake, written by id Software. It featured true 3D real-time rendering and is now licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License ....
(Quake, 1996) used fewer animated sprites and used true 3D geometry and lighting, using elaborate techniques such as Z-buffering
Z-buffering
In computer graphics, z-buffering is the management of image depth coordinates in three-dimensional graphics, usually done in hardware, sometimes in software. It is one solution to the visibility problem, which is the problem of deciding which elements of a rendered scene are visible, and which...
to speed up the rendering. Quake was also the first true-3D game to use a special map design system to preprocess and pre-render the 3D environment: the 3D environment in which the game took place (referred for the first time as a Map) was simplified during the creation of the map to reduce the processing required when playing the game.
Static lightmap
Lightmap
A lightmap is a data structure which contains the brightness of surfaces in 3d graphics applications such as video games. Lightmaps are precomputed and used for static objects. Quake was the first computer game to use lightmaps to augment rendering. Before lightmaps were invented, realtime...
s and 3D light sources were also added in the BSP
Binary space partitioning
In computer science, binary space partitioning is a method for recursively subdividing a space into convex sets by hyperplanes. This subdivision gives rise to a representation of the scene by means of a tree data structure known as a BSP tree.Originally, this approach was proposed in 3D computer...
files storing the levels, allowing for more realistic lighting.
The first Graphics processing unit
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
s appeared in the late 1990s, but many games still supported software rendering at that time. id Tech 2 (Quake II
Quake II
Quake II, released on December 9, 1997, is a first-person shooter computer game developed by Id Software and distributed by Activision. It is not a sequel to Quake; it merely uses the name of the former game due to Id's difficulties in coming up with alternative names.The soundtrack for Quake II...
, 1996) was one of the first games to take advantage of hardware accelerated graphics (id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
later reworked Quake to add OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
support to the game).
GoldSrc
GoldSrc
GoldSrc, or Goldsource, is the retronym used internally by Valve Software to refer to the heavily modified Quake engine that powers their science fiction first-person shooter Half-Life ....
, the engine derived from the Quake engine
Quake engine
The Quake engine is the game engine that was written to power 1996's Quake, written by id Software. It featured true 3D real-time rendering and is now licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License ....
by Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States...
for Half-Life (1998), added Direct3D
Direct3D
Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...
support, and a skeletal
Skeletal animation
Skeletal animation is a technique in computer animation in which a character is represented in two parts: a surface representation used to draw the character and a hierarchical set of interconnected bones used to animate the mesh...
framework to better render the NPCs
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
, and also greatly improved the NPCs artificial intelligence
Game artificial intelligence
Game artificial intelligence refers to techniques used in computer and video games to produce the illusion of intelligence in the behavior of non-player characters . The techniques used typically draw upon existing methods from the field of artificial intelligence...
(AI) compared to the Quake engine.
Late 1990s: Full 32-Bit Color, and GPUs become standard
This period saw the introduction of the first video cards with Transform, clipping, and lighting (T&L). The first card with this innovative technology was the GeForce 256GeForce 256
The GeForce 256 is the original release in Nvidia's "GeForce" product-line. Released on August 31, 1999, the GeForce 256 improves on its predecessor by increasing the number of fixed pixel pipelines, offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, and adding...
. This card was superior to what 3DFX had to offer at the time, namely Voodoo3
Voodoo3
Voodoo3 was a series of computer gaming video cards manufactured and designed by 3dfx Interactive. It was the successor to the company's high-end Voodoo 2 line and was based heavily upon the older Voodoo Banshee product. Voodoo3 was announced at COMDEX '98 and arrived on store shelves in 1999...
, which only fell short because the lack of T&L. Companies such as Matrox
Matrox
Matrox is a producer of video card components and equipment for personal computers. Based in Dorval, Quebec, Canada it was founded by Lorne Trottier and Branko Matić....
with their G400
Matrox G400
The G400 is a video card made by Matrox, released in September 1999. The graphics processor contains a 2D GUI, video, and Direct3D 6.0 3D accelerator...
, and S3
S3 Graphics
S3 Graphics, Ltd is an American company specializing in graphics chipsets. Although they do not have the large market share that they once had, they still produce graphics accelerators for home computers under the "S3 Chrome" brand name.-History:...
with their Savage4
S3 Savage
Savage was a product-line of PC graphics chipsets designed by S3.-Savage 3D:At the 1998 E3 Expo S3 introduced the first Savage product, Savage3D. Compared to its ViRGE-derived predecessor , Savage3D was a technological leap forward...
were forced to withdraw from the 3D gaming market during this time period. One year later, ATI
Ati
As a word, Ati may refer to:* Ati, a town in Chad* Ati, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines* Ati-Atihan Festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines* Ati, a queen of the fabled Land of Punt in Africa...
released their Radeon 7200
Radeon R100
The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, a major...
, a true competing card line.
While all games of this period supported 16-bit color, many were adopting 32-bit color (really 24-bit color with an 8-bit alpha channel) as well. Soon, many benchmark sites began touting 32-bit as a standard. The Unreal Engine
Unreal Engine
The Unreal Engine is a game engine developed by Epic Games, first illustrated in the 1998 first-person shooter game Unreal. Although primarily developed for first-person shooters, it has been successfully used in a variety of other genres, including stealth, MMORPGs and RPGs...
, used in a large number of FPS games since its release, was an important milestone at the time. It used the Glide API
Glide API
Glide is a 3D graphics API developed by 3dfx Interactive for their Voodoo Graphics 3D accelerator cards. Although it originally started as a proprietary API, it was later open sourced by 3dfx. It was dedicated to gaming performance, supporting geometry and texture mapping primarily, in data...
, specifically developed for 3dfx GPUs, instead of OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
. Probably the biggest reason for its popularity was that the engine architecture and the inclusion of a scripting language
UnrealScript
UnrealScript is the scripting language of the Unreal Engine and is used for authoring game code and gameplay events....
made it easy to mod
Modding
Modding is a slang expression that is derived from the verb "modify". Modding refers to the act of modifying a piece of hardware or software or anything else for that matter, to perform a function not originally conceived or intended by the designer...
it. One other improvement of Unreal compared to the previous generation of engines was its networking technology
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
, which greatly improved the scalability of the engine on multiplayer.
id Tech 3, first used for Quake III Arena
Quake III Arena
Quake III Arena , is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game released on December 2, 1999. The game was developed by id Software and featured music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly...
, improved from its predecessor by allowing to store much complex and smoother animations. It also had improved lighting and shadowing
Shadow volume
Shadow volume is a technique used in 3D computer graphics to add shadows to a rendered scene. They were first proposed by Frank Crow in 1977 as the geometry describing the 3D shape of the region occluded from a light source...
and introduced Shader
Shader
In the field of computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that is used primarily to calculate rendering effects on graphics hardware with a high degree of flexibility...
s and curved surfaces.
Early 2000s: Increasing detail, outdoor environments, and rag-doll physics
New graphics hardware provided new capabilities, allowing new engines to add various new effects, such as particle effects or fog, as well as increase texture and polygon detail. Many games featured large outdoor environments, vehicles, and rag-doll physics.Average Video Hardware requirements: a GPU with hardware T&L such as the DirectX 7.0 GeForce 2 or Radeon 7200
Radeon R100
The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, a major...
was typically required. The next-generation GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500 were recommended due to their more efficient architecture, though their DirectX 8.0 vertex and pixel shaders were of little use. A handful of games still supported DirectX 6.0 chipsets such as RIVA TNT2
RIVA TNT2
The RIVA TNT2 was a graphics processing unit manufactured by Nvidia starting in early 1999. The chip is codenamed "NV5" because it is the 5th graphics chip design by Nvidia, succeeding the RIVA TNT . RIVA is an acronym for Real-time Interactive Video and Animation accelerator...
and Rage 128, and software rendering (with an integrated Intel GMA
Intel GMA
The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator, or GMA, is a series of Intel integrated graphics processors built into various motherboard chipsets....
), though this was apparent that even a powerful CPU could not compensate for the lack of hardware T&L.
Games engines originally developed for the PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
platform, like the Unreal Engine 2.0, started to be adapted for sixth generation consoles
History of video game consoles (sixth generation)
The sixth-generation era refers to the computer and video games, video game consoles, and video game handhelds available at the turn of the 21st century. Platforms of the sixth generation include the Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube, and Microsoft Xbox...
like PlayStation 2
PlayStation 2
The PlayStation 2 is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Sony as part of the PlayStation series. Its development was announced in March 1999 and it was first released on March 4, 2000, in Japan...
or GameCube
Nintendo GameCube
The , officially abbreviated to NGC in Japan and GCN in other regions, is a sixth generation video game console released by Nintendo on September 15, 2001 in Japan, November 18, 2001 in North America, May 3, 2002 in Europe, and May 17, 2002 in Australia...
, those now having the computer power to handle graphic-intensive video games.
Mid 2000s: Lighting and Pixel Shaders, Physics
The new generation of graphics chips allowed pixel shader-based textures, bump mappingBump mapping
Bump mapping is a technique in computer graphics for simulating bumps and wrinkles on the surface of an object. This is achieved by perturbing the surface normals of the object and using the perturbed normal during lighting calculations. The result is an apparently bumpy surface rather than a...
, and lighting and shadowing
Unified lighting and shadowing
Unified shadow and lighting is the lighting model used in the Doom 3 game developed by id Software.Previous 3D games like Quake III Arena, used separate lighting models for determining how a light would illuminate a character or a map...
technologies to become common. Shader technologies included HLSL (for DirectX
DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...
), GLSL
GLSL
OpenGL Shading Language , is a high-level shading language based on the syntax of the C programming language...
(for OpenGL
OpenGL
OpenGL is a standard specification defining a cross-language, cross-platform API for writing applications that produce 2D and 3D computer graphics. The interface consists of over 250 different function calls which can be used to draw complex three-dimensional scenes from simple primitives. OpenGL...
), or Cg.
This resulted in the obsolescence of DirectX 7.0 graphics chips such as the widespread GeForce 2 and Radeon 7200
Radeon R100
The Radeon R100 is the first generation of Radeon graphics chips from ATI Technologies. The line features 3D acceleration based upon Direct3D 7.0 and OpenGL 1.3, and all but the entry-level versions offloading host geometry calculations to a hardware transform and lighting engine, a major...
, as well as DirectX 6.0 chipsets such as RIVA TNT2
RIVA TNT2
The RIVA TNT2 was a graphics processing unit manufactured by Nvidia starting in early 1999. The chip is codenamed "NV5" because it is the 5th graphics chip design by Nvidia, succeeding the RIVA TNT . RIVA is an acronym for Real-time Interactive Video and Animation accelerator...
and Rage 128, and integrated on-board
Motherboard
In personal computers, a motherboard is the central printed circuit board in many modern computers and holds many of the crucial components of the system, providing connectors for other peripherals. The motherboard is sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, or, on Apple...
graphics accelerators
Intel GMA
The Intel Graphics Media Accelerator, or GMA, is a series of Intel integrated graphics processors built into various motherboard chipsets....
. Until this generation of games, a powerful CPU was able to somewhat compensate for an older video card. Average Video Hardware requirements: minimum was a GeForce 3 or Radeon 8500, strongly recommended was the GeForce FX, Radeon 9700 (or other cards with Pixel shader 2.x support). The Radeon 9700 demonstrated that anti-aliasing
Anti-aliasing
In digital signal processing, spatial anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution image at a lower resolution...
(AA) and/or anisotropic filtering
Anisotropic filtering
In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces that are at oblique viewing angles with respect to the camera where the projection of the texture appears to be non-orthogonal In 3D computer graphics, anisotropic filtering...
(AF) could be fully usable options, even in the newest and most demanding titles at the time, and resulted in the widespread acceptance of AA and AF as standard features. AA and AF had been supported by many earlier graphics chips prior to this but carried a heavy performance hit and so most gamers opted not to enable these features.
Graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
performed some of the tasks that were already done by the CPU
Central processing unit
The central processing unit is the portion of a computer system that carries out the instructions of a computer program, to perform the basic arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations of the system. The CPU plays a role somewhat analogous to the brain in the computer. The term has been in...
, and more generally the increasing processing power available, allowed to add realistic physics effects to the games, for example with the inclusion of the Havok
Havok (software)
Havok Physics is a physics engine developed by Irish company Havok. It is designed primarily for video games, and allows for real-time collision and dynamics of rigid bodies in three dimensions. It provides multiple types of dynamic constraints between rigid bodies , and has a highly optimized...
physics engine in most video games. Physics had been already added in a video game in 1998 with Jurassic Park: Trespasser
Jurassic Park: Trespasser
Jurassic Park: Trespasser is a video game released in 1998 for Microsoft Windows after much hype and anticipation. The player assumes the role of Anne, the sole survivor of a plane crash on InGen's "Site B" one year after the events of The Lost World: Jurassic Park...
, but limited hardware capabilities at the time, and the absence of a middleware
Middleware
Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...
like Havok to handle physics had made it a technical and commercial failure.
id Tech 4, first used for Doom 3
Doom 3
Doom 3 is a science fiction horror video game developed by id Software and published by Activision. An example of the first-person shooter genre, Doom 3 was first released for Microsoft Windows on August 3, 2004. The game was later adapted for Linux, as well as being ported by Aspyr Media for Mac...
(2004), used an entirely dynamic per-pixel lighting
Per-pixel lighting
In computer graphics, per-pixel lighting is commonly used to refer to a set of methods for computing illumination at each rendered pixel of an image...
, whereas previously, 3D engines had relied primarily on pre-calculated per-vertex lighting or lightmap
Lightmap
A lightmap is a data structure which contains the brightness of surfaces in 3d graphics applications such as video games. Lightmaps are precomputed and used for static objects. Quake was the first computer game to use lightmaps to augment rendering. Before lightmaps were invented, realtime...
s and Gouraud shading
Gouraud shading
Gouraud shading, named after Henri Gouraud, is an interpolation method used in computer graphics to produce continuous shading of surfaces represented by polygon meshes...
. The Shadow volume
Shadow volume
Shadow volume is a technique used in 3D computer graphics to add shadows to a rendered scene. They were first proposed by Frank Crow in 1977 as the geometry describing the 3D shape of the region occluded from a light source...
approach used in Doom 3 permitted more realistic lighting and shadows, however this came at a price as it could not render soft shadows, and the engine was primarily good indoors. Later this was rectified to work with vast outdoor spaces, with the introduction of MegaTexture
MegaTexture
MegaTexture refers to a texture allocation technique facilitating the use of a single extremely large texture rather than repeating multiple smaller textures. It is featured in Splash Damage's game Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and was developed by id Software technical director John...
technology in the id Tech 4 engine.
The same year, Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation
Valve Corporation is an American video game development and digital distribution company based in Bellevue, Washington, United States...
released Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2 , the sequel to Half-Life, is a first-person shooter video game and a signature title in the Half-Life series. It is singleplayer, story-driven, science fiction, and linear...
, powered by their new Source engine
Source engine
Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve Corporation. It debuted in June 2004 with Counter-Strike: Source and shortly thereafter Half-Life 2, and has been in active development ever since...
. This new engine was notable in that, among other things, it had very realistic facial animations for NPCs
Non-player character
A non-player character , sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any fictional character not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence...
, including what was described as an impressive lip-syncing technology.
Late 2000s: The approach to Photorealism
Further improvements in GPUsGraphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit or GPU is a specialized circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory in such a way so as to accelerate the building of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display...
like Shader Model 3
Shader
In the field of computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that is used primarily to calculate rendering effects on graphics hardware with a high degree of flexibility...
or Shader Model 4
Unified shader model
Unified Shader Model term is used to describe two similar but separate concepts: Unified Shading Architecture and Unified Shader Model.- Unified Shader Model :...
, made possible by new graphic chipsets as GeForce 7
GeForce 7 Series
The GeForce 7 Series is the seventh generation of Nvidia's GeForce graphics processing units.-Features:The following features are common to all models in the GeForce 7 series except the GeForce 7100, which lacks GCAA:-GeForce 7100 Series:...
or Radeon X1xxx
Radeon R520
ATI's "R520" core is the foundation for a line of DirectX 9.0c and OpenGL 2.0 3D accelerator X1000 video cards. It is ATI's first major architectural overhaul since the "R300" core and is highly optimized for Shader Model 3.0. The Radeon X1000 series using the core was introduced on October 5,...
series, allowed for improvements in graphic effects.
Shader
In the field of computer graphics, a shader is a computer program that is used primarily to calculate rendering effects on graphics hardware with a high degree of flexibility...
-based materials with predefined physics, environments with procedural and vertex shader-based objects (vegetation
Vegetation
Vegetation is a general term for the plant life of a region; it refers to the ground cover provided by plants. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic characteristics. It is broader...
, debris, human-made objects such as books or tools), procedural animation
Procedural animation
A procedural animation is a type of computer animation, used to automatically generate animation in real-time to allow for a more diverse series of actions than could otherwise be created using predefined animations....
, cinematographic effects (depth of field
Depth of field
In optics, particularly as it relates to film and photography, depth of field is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image...
, motion blur
Motion blur
Motion blur is the apparent streaking of rapidly moving objects in a still image or a sequence of images such as a movie or animation. It results when the image being recorded changes during the recording of a single frame, either due to rapid movement or long exposure.- Photography :When a camera...
, etc.), High dynamic range rendering
High dynamic range rendering
In 3D computer graphics, high dynamic range rendering , also known as high dynamic range lighting, is the rendering of computer graphics scenes by using lighting calculations done in a larger dynamic range. This allows preservation of details that may be lost due to limiting contrast ratios...
, and unified lighting models with soft shadowing and volumetric lighting
Volumetric lighting
Volumetric lighting is a technique used in 3D computer graphics to add lighting effects to a rendered scene. It allows the viewer to see beams of light shining through the environment; seeing sunbeams streaming through an open window is an example of volumetric lighting, also known as crepuscular...
.
However, most of engines capable of these effects are evolutions of engines from the previous generation, such as Unreal Engine 3, the Dunia Engine
Dunia Engine
The Dunia Engine is a game engine designed by Kirmaan Aboobaker while working at Crytek. It is based on the CryEngine but was heavily modified by the Ubisoft Montréal development team for use in Far Cry 2. A reworked and modified version of the Dunia Engine is used for James Cameron's Avatar: The...
and CryEngine 2 (evolved from the CryEngine
CryENGINE
CryEngine is a game engine used for the first-person shooter computer game Far Cry. It was originally developed by Crytek as a technology demo for Nvidia and, when the company saw its potential, it was turned into a game....
), or the Source engine
Source engine
Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve Corporation. It debuted in June 2004 with Counter-Strike: Source and shortly thereafter Half-Life 2, and has been in active development ever since...
.
The first games using Unreal Engine 3 were released in November 2006, and the first game to use CryEngine 2 (Crysis
Crysis
Crysis is a science fiction first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek , published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows, and released in November 2007. It is the first game of a trilogy. A separate game entitled Crysis Warhead was released on September 12, 2008, and follows similar...
) was released in 2007.
Early 2010: Graphic technique mixes
As of 2010, two upcoming evolutions of major existing engines have been announced: id Tech 5Id Tech 5
id Tech 5 is the latest proprietary game engine being developed by id Software, currently still being actively upgraded, and follows its predecessors, id Tech 1, 2, 3 and 4. It is a major advancement over id Tech 4. The engine was first demonstrated at the WWDC 2007 by John D...
(which will be used for the first time with the video games Rage
Rage (video game)
Rage is a first-person shooter video game by id Software which was released on October 4, 2011 in North America. It uses the company's new OpenGL based id Tech 5 engine. The game was first shown as a tech demo on June 11, 2007, at Apple's WWDC, and was officially announced on August 2, 2007, at...
and then with Doom 4
Doom 4
Doom 4 is the upcoming multi-platform installment of the Doom series by id Software. The game will use the company's new id Tech 5 engine and is slated for simultaneous release on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360...
, and will feature a new Virtual Texturing
MegaTexture
MegaTexture refers to a texture allocation technique facilitating the use of a single extremely large texture rather than repeating multiple smaller textures. It is featured in Splash Damage's game Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and was developed by id Software technical director John...
technology), and the CryEngine 3, which powers Crysis 2
Crysis 2
Crysis 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek, published by Electronic Arts and released in North America, Australia, and Europe in March 2011 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360...
.
Few companies have discussed future plans for their engines; id Tech 6
Id Tech 6
id Tech 6 is an upcoming OpenGL based game engine under preliminary development by id Software, which will tentatively follow id Tech 5 for id Software games following Rage, and Doom 4....
, the eventual successor to id Tech 5, is an exception. Preliminary information about this engine which is still in early phases of development tend to show that id Software
Id Software
Id Software is an American video game development company with its headquarters in Richardson, Texas. The company was founded in 1991 by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack...
is looking toward a direction where ray tracing and classic raster graphics
Raster graphics
In computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium...
would be mixed. However, according to John Carmack, the hardware capable of id Tech 6 does not yet exist.