what games are the best for showing it off nowadays? First person to say Crysis 1 gets a pint of nanobots down the japs-eye 

Battlefield 4, Crysis 3, Witcher 2, Bulletstorm, Metro, Modded Skyrim, Modded GTA4... all different engines 

The thing that always bugged me about it was the purely flat ambient light. Made everything look fake. The SSAO just made it worse. There was also plenty of pop-in, weird looking clouds and strange noisy shadow filtering. The skin shading was also really weird looking, it looked like subtly backlit wax from all angles somehow. And all the hard surfaces have this plastic sheen to them. When Doom3 did it everyone complained about it, seems by 2007 everyone just got used to it.

Maybe if the art direction wasn't so bloody generic it could have worked. Crysis 2 was like being locked up inside a Michael Bay flick with the visuals. Latest Crysis really improved in all those areas, tough it all still looks abnormally slick to me.

Meh, screw realism, boring... 

With TressFX switched on. I get about 0.5 FPS that way, I expect you can do better :) 

With TressFX switched on. I get about 0.5 FPS that way, I expect you can do better :) 

Battlefield 4 isn't out yet... right? I imagine BF 3 would be a good bet though. I think Witcher, Skyrim, modded GTA 4 are all pretty solid choices too.

Hmm, nothing in there really sets my heart on fire though. Blame the current console generation, but PC graphics aren't really moving forward very fast are they?? 

What Spiney said...

But if you just want to see photo-realistic pixels patterns in realtime, rthdribl is my choice, until we get photon mapping in realtime. 

http://youtu.be/9k-N49P5N1I

uncludes download link.
my issue with it is that's it's really hard to make up foreground from background 

But yeah, it's hard to distinguish what's solid and what's not. The gunshots are hard to see as well, and they made a mistake when going through doors - they shouldn't move where your character is on the screen after going through them.

It's a bit odd as well - it looks like most of the work done was on converting the Q2 assets. Why not just make a game?

Maybe I'm being too cynical. 

Pretty awesome looking! I haven't downloaded but I shall. 

Judging from the videos the guy is mostly a coder and he generally takes other game stuff to test/show off his engine. 

http://openxcom.org/index.php/2013/05/its-finally-here-version-0-9/
OpenXCom 0.9 (fully playable)

I hope it is ok to post in this thread as it is available for not only Windows but also MacOS, Linux, OpenBSD, Haiku and some consoles (handheld!). 

Well, I bought this during the Steam weekend special at half off. I was expecting to really not like it. I generally find 3rd person games to be awkward and difficult to control. I was right about that, but I ended up actually enjoying most of the game.

The QTE parts of the game can have serious problems on the PC. During QTE "combat" sequences the game often would not respond to the keyboard "button mashing". I also experienced loss of mouse control in several "escape" sequences. I found out that these problems mostly went away by temporarily using lower video settings and turning v-sync off. Unfortunately I didn't find out about this work-around until toward the end of the game.

The environments are very nice. The level design, texturing, etc. are all top notch. The models and animation are some of the best I've seen in a game of this type. For once Lara's chest is actually pretty normal. The storyline was good as were the puzzle parts and overall the game was interesting enough to keep me playing almost non-stop for days and actually continuing all the way to the very end.

I ended up at 91% completion overall (I gave up on trying to find all the exploration type items about halfway through). I played on normal difficulty for almost the entire game.

If it wasn't for the control issues I'd rated it 9 out of 10 stars easy. Even though those issues only occur in a few short parts of the game, it causes a lot of frustration and really detracts from the overall experience. 

and its fucking amazing. A bit on the easy side I suppose but fuck is it beautiful and well thought out and expansive. HL was my 1st love and this rekindles the flames and then some. If you have even a passing interest and a copy of HL on your computer, check it out.
Hopefully, unlike me, you'll have the time to absorb it in long sittings, instead of 30 minute chunks. Fuck. not like the old days. 

So far (1/3 the way through), I actually agree with Ricky about this, gasp.

QTEs are utterly irredeemably awful.

Oft-changing and randomly fixed camera perspective is very poor.

Constant switching between controlling Lara and just watching Lara is pointless nonsense.

^^^ all of the above are immersion-breaking bollox.

BUT:

Graphics, lighting, and effects are superb, environments and atmosphere are very good, characters are very well done, Lara in particular is portrayed convincingly, the progression in intriguing, and the actual combat gameplay is fair, slick and pretty good fun (and shows how good the game could have been if they hadn't spoiled it with QTE shite). Like Ricky all of those aspects are strong enough to keep me playing it despite the clear (and deliberate) control flaws. 

 

(probably) 

(probably) 

I wondered why he was actually making sense about the game! 

Actually, I'm the Rick that made Castle of Oblivion and Well of Wishes and Polygon Base for Quake (I made a few Doom 2 maps also). I'm still working (off and on) to finish a re-make of Well of Wishes.

I think Tomb Raider may end up as Game of the Year. It would be really nice if they'd patch it to fix the QTE "combat" buttons bug and the occasional issues with mouse control.

Some of the escape sequences where you have to run across floors and bridges, which are crumbling and falling away beneath you, are really hard to get past when you can't turn with the mouse.

The annoying QTE and buggy sequences probably only added up to 15 minutes or less of play time, compared to maybe 40 hours total, that's not too much of an issue considering how much I enjoyed the rest of the game.

I think I probably played through too fast. I may wait a few weeks and give it another go. Overall I had a lot of fun. The "Shipwrecked Beach" and "Mountain Village" areas are awesome levels full of tons of exploration. 

Shot from The Witness (the new game from Jonathan Blow of Braid fame)
http://the-witness.net/news/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Shannon_01.jpg

prettyyyy 

And a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Brd0F7rlXCI

Wow. Might be the best looking game I've ever seen. 

Looks great. Though I think the vegetation looks too different a style to the rest of the scene? Color palette is somewhat garish at times (not unlike braid). But yeah, really good looking for the most part. 

Looks great, and the music makes you want to see the video again.

It's giving me lots of ideas for mapping. 

looks cute. like the music. hope it's on pc.

but I'd rather kill shit than solve maze puzzles.

reminds me of a happier myst.