Unreal Engine 3 - E3 2004 Tech Demo Presentation [Gears of War Early Prototype]

2004 Tech demo of the Unreal Engine 3 with early Gears of War assets.

Source: E3 Access 2004 DVD.

[twotonetheartist]

I remember when this video was first released. Blew my mind back then, and it still looks impressive today.

[McGregor]

It's funny how much this demo emphasizes dynamic shadows when most UE3 games just used baked lighting.

[davidnichol]

2008: "this scene is made up of about one million total polygons of in-game assets"

2022: "this statue is made up of over 4 billion polygons... now here's a room with a thousand of those statues!"

[Whoareyoucalling]

Im a bit shocked UE3 supported all of these graphically intensive technologies. Multi pass frame buffering, distortion based ambient occlusion, virtual displacement mapping, per pixle light casting, per object motion blur, dynamic shadows, realistic rag doll physics, i mean what games if any used any of these features? Took until halfway through UE4 development before these started to be used at any capacity.

[TreesOnTheMoon]

I remember watching this and early teasers of Gears of War back in 2004-2005. I was so hyped for the Xbox 360 launch and Gears of War 1. I remember telling all my friends about this new upcoming game "Gears of War" before anyone had even heard about it. I've been hyped about many games over the years that turned out to be disappointments but that time I was right.

I bought it on launch day in 2006 and it was amazing. It felt like a giant leap in graphics from the original Xbox/PS2, it was one of those games that truly felt "next-gen"

[Freakingbean]

If a game looked like this today it wouldn't look bad. People would complement the art style.

[raicastt]

crazy to think this engine was used for Arkham Knight, a 2016 game that can be compared with the greatest looking games nowadays.

[EpicAlanW]

I was the person running the PC during this demo :P Twenty years went by quick!

[alvaro]

Uno de los grandes saltos gráficos de la historia de los videojuegos. Llega hasta nuestros días.

[amdtify]

Dynamic shadows was stripped away from UE3 sadly thats shown here.

[LilMissMurder]

It still looks better than most modern engines.

[leeeinfield]

Wow even today this tech demo looks amazing

[freakencreeper]

Welp i found the only video with the locust dragon.

[unraveledultimatefate]

That's really during the time when john carmack introduced his doom 3 project at e3 2002 tokyo, with new bump mapping technology at a time, stencil shadows, and per pixel lighting.

[coreywallace]

It just baffles me how Gears of War 1 didn't hold up well (in terms of lighting, texture decals, shadows & overall visuals) when this tech demo, showed 2 years prior to Gears 1's release, still looks gorgeous to this day, and also looks far ahead of Gears 1 in every aspect. Even when compared to playing Gears 1 today on a high-end PC with your Graphics Card maxed out & all in-game settings maxed out, it still doesn't come anywhere near to this tech demo milestone.

[dillusions]

It's interesting that nowadays dynamic shadows and reflections can only be achieved with RTX, while 20 years ago it worked without it.

[SiggsGBR]

I do adore Source engine, but that was demo'd the year before this; The differences between the two engines is huge

[elsnacko]

Was this recorded at a military base? Lmao.

[ethanwasme]

anyone else getting the urge to download UDK 😂😂

[dbstop]

Este motor gráfico continuó el salto que vimos en doom3, far cry o half-life 2, las texturas empiezan a tener "relieve", ya no son planas y ya cuesta distinguir los polígonos. Y pensar que antes cada 2-3 años veíamos saltos gráficos de este estilo, ahora con tanto remaster, juego en 2d, pixel art, estilo anime y demás parece que ya no hay interés en evolucionar los gráficos.