Realtime immersive - Militar simulator cryengine

[hellfire257 3]

You all seem quite happy to slag off Crysis despite it being generally very well received.

[maturin 12]

In my opinion Crysis is an example of eye candy over gameplay and content, and so far as it is used for evidence of the PC's superiority as a gaming platform, a pathetic example.

[hellfire257 3]

I expected most of the crowd here to see past that. I find the gameplay similar to ARMA in that the gameplay is exactly what you make it to be.

[[frl]myke 14]

You all seem quite happy to slag off Crysis despite it being generally very well received.

"Well received" doesn't say anything about it's quality. I remember in the old times when video players (you might remember, VHS tapes) were about to come up. There where 3 standards fighting for acceptance, VHS, Betamax and VCR/Video2000. Although VHS had the worst quality of these 3 competitors, it finally won. And do you know why? Because pron producers jumped on VHS. So it had what the simple crowd wanted.

I admit that i've only played the demo of the first Crysis but i didn't liked it much. It looked great, yes, but besides that it had nothing special to offer. The demo level was a (well hidden) corridor and AI wasn't really smart. It was clearly visible that they were scripted and couldn't act on their own. If it comes to AI (real AI, not scripted AI), the ArmA series is still superior to everything i saw so far.

[maddogx 13]

The Crysis games were "well recieved" because game reviewers tend to focus entirely on story and graphics, as if they were reviewing a movie. If a game looks flashy and has a 'splosion-packed Michael Bay style rollercoaster campaign, it will generally get good reviews. Come to think of it, "rollercoaster" is exactly the right word - because the whole thing is on rails, amirite? It's a shootercoaster! ;)

That's not to say that the CryEngine isn't an awesome game engine, but it takes more than snazzy graphics to make a military simulator.

[PuFu 4600]

Watched those new videos.

Crytek guys don't just get the point do they? ITSEC 2011 kinda told them that military wants a superfunctional training tool - but it seems Crytek understood it as "goddamnit looks like our presentation wasn't Call of Duty enough, make it even more cinematic, they must be impressed!"

What to expect from a developer who never made a game in their lives, only shader effect techdemos.

crytek has nothing to do with it. moreso, crysis just as much/little to do with it. it just like saying all products made with udk are similar to ut2000 or whatever.

i told you numerous times before: if you have no idea what you're talking about, the smart move is to just keep quiet. or in your case, far away from keyboard.

Edited December 10, 2012 by PuFu

[walker 0]

Hi all

The title of the thread is missleading, there is no military simulator based on this low quality film engine, nothing produced using it is realtime, it is all prerendered and not even up to the quality of open source pre render film engines, nevermind what a proffesional film engine can produce.

Kind Regards walker

[NoRailgunner 0]

How many game engines are made to fit the requirements of military simulations to train and prepare military personnel/staff? How important is entertainment/sfx for military simulations?

[Beagle 684]

How many game engines are made to fit the requirements of military simulations to train and prepare military personnel/staff? How important is entertainment/sfx for military simulations?

Computer Simulations were a step back from the old simulators using scale models and scale terrain sandboxes...so yes, visuals are important but not to that point we soo currently in gfx heavy game engines...that better than real stuff is beginning to look distracting and more and more far from real scenes. The problem is that a lot of Engines represent a CCD camera realism, not what we see with the MKI eyeballs. Just two words...Bloom and lensflares.

[antoineflemming 14]

The Crysis games were "well recieved" because game reviewers tend to focus entirely on story and graphics, as if they were reviewing a movie. If a game looks flashy and has a 'splosion-packed Michael Bay style rollercoaster campaign, it will generally get good reviews. Come to think of it, "rollercoaster" is exactly the right word - because the whole thing is on rails, amirite? It's a shootercoaster! ;)

That's not to say that the CryEngine isn't an awesome game engine, but it takes more than snazzy graphics to make a military simulator.

No, you are not "rite". Crysis 1 was an open-world (like Delta Force Land Warrior or Ghost Recon (pre-COD4), not ArmA) tactical-esque shooter. It was one of those games that came out at the same time COD4 did. Crysis 2 and 3 are that COD wannabe series, just like Medal of Honor. Crysis was well received because it was actually built on a good game engine for the time. No, it wasn't an on-rails shooter. No, it wasn't an explosion-fest Michael Bay roller coaster campaign. With all due respect, take PuFu's advice. If you don't know about the subject, don't comment on it.

And, yes, I've played first-person shooter games (as opposed to only playing ArmA for a decade) before and after 2007 (when COD4, Crysis, Medal of Honor Airborne, and others were released), and it's very clear the difference in games before and after that point, especially PC games. Sure, most games weren't simulators, but more than enough (like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Delta Force, America's Army, your big name shooters back then) were closer to the tactical shooter genre than they were to the action shooter genre. None of these games mentioned, nor Crysis, are an ArmA (as in, a military shooter), but that doesn't mean that "not-ArmA" = "shootercoaster".

[maddogx 13]

No, you are not "rite". Crysis 1 was an open-world (like Delta Force Land Warrior or Ghost Recon (pre-COD4), not ArmA) tactical-esque shooter. It was one of those games that came out at the same time COD4 did. Crysis 2 and 3 are that COD wannabe series, just like Medal of Honor. Crysis was well received because it was actually built on a good game engine for the time. No, it wasn't an on-rails shooter. No, it wasn't an explosion-fest Michael Bay roller coaster campaign. With all due respect, take PuFu's advice. If you don't know about the subject, don't comment on it.

You're coming off quite defensive on the subject, especially considering the tongue-in-cheek tone of my post. (I thought the "amirite" and the smiley gave it away, but whatever.)

And while you are correct that Crysis 1 was less of a rails shooter than 2 and 3, the "open" parts were rather few and far between. The rest of it was a string of predictable set pieces. A wide corridor is still a corridor.

[metalcraze 290]

You all seem quite happy to slag off Crysis despite it being generally very well received.

Call of Duty sells 12 mln copies. Pretty well received too.

Sure nice shaders look nice (which however isn't the case in RTI videos which look quite bad), but after 20 minutes of staring at them in awe what remains in every CryEngine-built "game"?

Nothing.

Crysis 1 was an open-world (like Delta Force Land Warrior or Ghost Recon (pre-COD4), not ArmA) tactical-esque shooter.

What was tactical-esque about it? Press magical "stealth" button so dumb AI won't distract you from admiring the scenery?

What was open world about it? 100m wide corridors that led to the exactly same place and exactly from the same direction no matter how you went?

Should've used Far Cry as an example at least. There you could've swum around the whole island (at least in 1st half of the game before it turned into a corridor). For 2004 (HL2, Doom3) it was still quite new, considering that "arcade shooters" were mostly corridors still.

CryEngine was always about GRAPHIX and it does them rather well (or did before crappy looking Crysis 2). Unfortunately CryTek's mentality is "A good engine is the one the does GRAPHIX" and they simply don't understand that games must have something else to them if they want to appeal to gamers and not people who watch interactive movies on their TV screens with gamepads.

Edited December 10, 2012 by metalcraze

[PuFu 4600]

No, you are not "rite". Crysis 1 was an open-world (like Delta Force Land Warrior or Ghost Recon (pre-COD4), not ArmA) tactical-esque shooter. It was one of those games that came out at the same time COD4 did. Crysis 2 and 3 are that COD wannabe series, just like Medal of Honor. Crysis was well received because it was actually built on a good game engine for the time. No, it wasn't an on-rails shooter. No, it wasn't an explosion-fest Michael Bay roller coaster campaign. With all due respect, take PuFu's advice. If you don't know about the subject, don't comment on it.

And, yes, I've played first-person shooter games (as opposed to only playing ArmA for a decade) before and after 2007 (when COD4, Crysis, Medal of Honor Airborne, and others were released), and it's very clear the difference in games before and after that point, especially PC games. Sure, most games weren't simulators, but more than enough (like Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Delta Force, America's Army, your big name shooters back then) were closer to the tactical shooter genre than they were to the action shooter genre. None of these games mentioned, nor Crysis, are an ArmA (as in, a military shooter), but that doesn't mean that "not-ArmA" = "shootercoaster".

oh, hold on to your knickers lad: the fact that you consider crysis a good game has nothing to do with the subject here. Plus you are in a minority here. I got to say i have bought a bundle of steam not long ago, including crysis, warhead, as well as crysis 2. There is as much tactic-esque as is the next not so corridor, although one way game game out there. Hell, FarCry 3 is a lot more tactic oriented if you ask me. You are wrong to assume that BIS fans play only BIS games. Most around here have been playing game on PC since HC, if not earlier.

ahh and please don't quote me out of the context.

in the grand scheme of things, crysis sold well, because was a beautiful game, and a proper benchmark tool. Not because it was/is a good game.

If you wanna talk proper tactical games, R6 franchise ended with raven shield (don't even bother mentioning the vegas ones please), and ghost recon advanced warfighter 1 and 2 is not even close to the original one. swat 4 was a good one though. Delta force, played the 1998 and 1999 ones (the first and DF2 quite a lot, then the black hawk down one, which was, in my opinion, worse...)

back on the subject: this simulator, or whatever, is not made by crytek, is made on an engine made by crytek. Difference

Edited December 11, 2012 by PuFu
Typo

[MAVEN 1]

CryEngine is great.

Customizable, lots of optimized detail, and capability to display graphics like no other game engine around.

BUT, it's never been a good choice for simulators and it will maybe never be. Why? It's simple, it's built for casual gaming, to drop peoples jaws with it's gorgeous graphics and free-roaming, not for precision that is needed in simulators like VBS, DCS: FC3, DCS: BS2, etc. In addition to that, CryEngine died a bit after Crysis 1, they simplified it too much and started making a Frostbite clone out of it. Not a good thing.

In today's gaming industry, developers can opt for one of two things - Eye candy, or functionality.

P.S. There's a typo in the thread headline :P

[froggyluv 2136]

Theres also the possibility that military trainers want both perhaps. That is, VBS style ultra-wide scale pure functionality as far as relatively unlimited size, scope and units for massive amounts of logistics training. As well as smaller, CQB, "feels like your there" training scenarios in what we Arma elitists call shooter on rails. Its hard to tell with this ITSEC display as everything looks prerendered -but if they are able to recreate again certain scenarios, such as inspecting a market for IEDs - come under ambush - and the end results comes across as more believable (whether scripted or not) such as soldiers looking for and fully utilising cover, civilians reacting somewhat more theatrically etc... I could see a reason to want both. You may not be able to leave the scenario parameters and play a "go anywhere, drive anything, full map logistics" but for the training purpose at hand it may not always be necessary.

[MAVEN 1]

Wish there was something like this for A2/A3 -

[metalcraze 290]

crytek has nothing to do with it.

In that case BIS has nothing to do with VBS2.

i told you numerous times before: if you have no idea what you're talking about, the smart move is to just keep quiet. or in your case, far away from keyboard.

And I always find it funny how the irony of that is always lost on you.

That's why RTI shares illnesses of Crytek starting with an ubersilly name that sounds like buzzwords coming from Yerli's marketing department (realtime! immersive!) to CoDesque presentations.

Yerli just wanted to play with big boys I guess but doesn't really know how.

in the grand scheme of things, crysis sold well, because was a beautiful game, and a proper benchmark tool. Not because it was/is a good game.

Exactly. But it doesn't work in a market that demands the actual gameplay. Which includes so called "serious gaming" market.

Edited December 11, 2012 by metalcraze

[hellfire257 3]

Call of Duty sells 12 mln copies. Pretty well received too.

Sure nice shaders look nice (which however isn't the case in RTI videos which look quite bad), but after 20 minutes of staring at them in awe what remains in every CryEngine-built "game"?

Nothing.

So? It doesn't mean it is a bad game, it just isn't for you.

Other than shaders, Crysis 1 left me with:

A semi-enjoyable plot;

A sweet SDK and some nice mods;

A fresh approach to the manshooter genre;

Pseudo intelligent AI;

I don't see where your blind hatred of anything by Crytek comes from. It smells an awful lot like inverse fanboy syndrome.

Overall I agree with Pufu. RTI are trying but there's no way this psuedo-simulator can compete with VBS2 on a grand scale. I imagine it is superior for some applications though.

[NoRailgunner 0]

If you want to see some more military simulators/simulations just look for CAE, Thales, BAE, Rheinmetall, Elbit and others.... RTI are just trying to use cryengine to sell whatever product they build/develop on it. Similar to gamedevs who bought a certain game engine and trying to make & sell their projects/games. It's their own decision to take risks and make profit! Guess most buyers of professional military simulations are interested in getting something they want and need for a good price/deal. ;)

[hellfire257 3]

Saw that one today as well.

[NZXSHADOWS 0]

Well I would think that using a virtual world that is cinematic to conduct visual testing is good. I have yet to see any other engine trying to do the same. Ok maybe I have but still. Maybe its not about the functionality but the visual aspect of rendering out a realistic or close to realistic environment for distraction of the area. Like the attain video its showed a personal on a patrol looking out for items an flagging them as they noticed things. Now if you used an engine that wasn't so detail'ish then you couldn't be trained to be observant due to the lack of visual distractions. Have you used ARMA or VBS2 an placed a IED on the road? You can spot that shit easily. So I think that RTI has a good product with the amount of detail they use. Even if it's not 100% visually accurate. It's a damn good start I think.

Some Gameplay from I/ITSEC 2012

jCTRK0LiMmM

Edited December 12, 2012 by NZXSHADOWS

[antoineflemming 14]

oh, hold on to your knickers lad: the fact that you consider crysis a good game has nothing to do with the subject here. Plus you are in a minority here. I got to say i have bought a bundle of steam not long ago, including crysis, warhead, as well as crysis 2. There is as much tactic-esque as is the next not so corridor, although one way game game out there. Hell, FarCry 3 is a lot more tactic oriented if you ask me. You are wrong to assume that BIS fans play only BIS games. Most around here have been playing game on PC since HC, if not earlier.

ahh and please don't quote me out of the context.

in the grand scheme of things, crysis sold well, because was a beautiful game, and a proper benchmark tool. Not because it was/is a good game.

If you wanna talk proper tactical games, R6 franchise ended with raven shield (don't even bother mentioning the vegas ones please), and ghost recon advanced warfighter 1 and 2 is not even close to the original one. swat 4 was a good one though. Delta force, played the 1998 and 1999 ones (the first and DF2 quite a lot, then the black hawk down one, which was, in my opinion, worse...)

back on the subject: this simulator, or whatever, is not made by crytek, is made on an engine made by crytek. Difference

Good game engine is not the same as a good game. I said it was a good game engine. I've only played Crysis 1 by the way. For a 2007 game that wasn't a military simulator, that was pretty open world for a standard FPS. Crysis sold well because it was a sci fi shooter on a beautiful looking engine (once again, beautiful looking for 2007). That's ALL I'm saying. In other words, it wasn't sold because it was an on-rail shooter. Medal of Honor Warfighter is on rails. Waaay too much. I wouldn't say Crysis was a good game. It's decent for a 2007 FPS. And, yes, Crysis isn't technically a tactical game. The Advanced Warfighter games are still rather tactical, although definitely much less so than the original. Never played Swat 4 or Rainbow Six series. I really liked the Delta Force games, although yes BHD was worse, despite it's better graphics. And apparently Novalogic is still moving ahead with their next Delta Force game (the one that's been in the making since 2008 I believe and one that still looks like a 4 year old game).

And, yes, you are definitely correct. This is a CryEngine 3 project, not some Crytek game. Big difference if you ask me.

[max power 21]

Well I would think that using a virtual world that is cinematic to conduct visual testing is good. I have yet to see any other engine trying to do the same. Ok maybe I have but still. Maybe its not about the functionality but the visual aspect of rendering out a realistic or close to realistic environment for distraction of the area. Like the attain video its showed a personal on a patrol looking out for items an flagging them as they noticed things. Now if you used an engine that wasn't so detail'ish then you couldn't be trained to be observant due to the lack of visual distractions. Have you used ARMA or VBS2 an placed a IED on the road? You can spot that shit easily. So I think that RTI has a good product with the amount of detail they use. Even if it's not 100% visually accurate. It's a damn good start I think.

Some Gameplay from I/ITSEC 2012

I really agree that the detailed environments are impressive. But again, wow, that rendering is really way too much. I have been down to near the equator in summer before, but not to afganistan mind you, but the glare really isn't that bad. The sun can hurt your eyes, and it does reflect off of pavement and buildings, but it doesn't completely obliterate everything further than 10 feet in front of you. Things do look very harsh, but there aren't completely invisible.

Edited December 12, 2012 by Max Power

[pathetic_berserker 4]

Though I'm currently looking at doing some stuf in Cryengine3 I have to agree with some of the harsher crits directed at the way it has been used. Partcularly contrast filters, I'm hoping its just 'this weeks T-shirt' coz right now, every where I look, its a bit over done.

[MAVEN 1]

CryEngine is all about visuals and little about functionality.

Visually, the engine is great it boasts good graphics. But when it comes to functionality there comes a problem.

Developers have to choose two things when developing a title - Will they go for appearance or functionality, because nobody's budget is ever big enough to cover everything. Games like BF3, COD, Crysis 3, etc are developed with visuals in mind, in other words, make a quick buck with less bang. While games/simulators like ArmA 2, VBS2, DCS series are designed with functionality with a goal to primarily educate and then entertain, in some cases train even.

Another issue all games and developers face today is outdated software. Sure you get all the eye popping iron sights, explosions, attachments, animated menus, etc, but that's old stuff, it was invented decades ago. A good example is tesselation, MS claims like it's a brand new feature and a big breakthrough, but did you know tesselation aka subdivision was invented few decades ago? The heck, I used that feature in my own game prototype and CGI design when I was a teen and still learning.

It's all marketing, people gotta make for a living somehow.

There's a really nice tech by Euclideon called Unlimited Detail. Some say it's fake, but there was a live demo released that shows how this kind of tech is indeed a game changer. If Devs had the chance to use something like that, they would no longer focus on spending mountains of money on visual development, but add functionality to their products, and for those who do add great functionality visuals would no longer be a problem.

Imagine ArmA 4 or 5 or whatever 50000 square killometers terrain with lush vegenation, realistic sound, physics, effects, etc. It's possible even now, but you won't see it happen, because big corps wont allow for that to happen as long masses are willing to pay for 80USD 2005 refurbished game (CODW, W for whatever)