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Cevat Yerli’s attempt to steal Samaritan’s tech demo thunder

By on April 20, 2011

There is no denying that CryEngine 3 is a remarkable game-engine. It’s also a fact that it supports some pretty interesting features, like GI, sub-surface scattering and movie quality camera effects. But we have to wonder what was Cevat Yerli thinking when he tried to compare it with the latest, next-generation version of Unreal 3 engine. Especially when Crysis 2, the title that would showcase CryEngine 3, was not as impressive as we had expected.

According to Yerli, Crytek has been waiting for next-generation consoles since Crysis 1: “We’ve been considering the next generation and what it will likely consist of for many years now, so everything we did in CryEngine 3 has been with an eye on future hardware architectures,” Yerli told GI.biz.

“Some recently advertised ‘next-gen’ features in other middleware are running in an unplayable tech demo on a supercomputer. But a bunch of these same features are available right now, in the current generation, in Crysis 2!”

Ouch. It’s pretty much clear that Yerli is pointing out to Unreal 3 Engine with its next-generation features. So let us get this right… is Yerli suggesting that constant 60fps is unplayable? If constant 60fps is unplayable, what was Crysis’ performance considered when it was released? Is he even suggesting that CryEngine 3’s features are better optimized when the engine doesn’t even have any DX11 implementation as of yet?

Sorry Cevat, but the Samaritan tech-demo is way ahead of everything we’ve seen from all those CryEngine 3 tech demos. Yeah, CryEngine 3 supports most of them but we haven’t seen them in use. If Crytek wanted to demonstrate CryEngine 3’s capabilities, they could enable all those funky features in Crysis 2 but damn, that game doesn’t even support POM that was in its prequel. And don’t get us started with the limited, real-time destructibility of Crysis 2’s environments.

Yerli’s statements get funnier. As he clearly states, the company was ready for the next-generation consoles right after releasing Crysis 1 for the PC. Which brings us back to what he was stating few years ago. In case you don’t remember, he was stating that Crysis 2 would look better, will be more advanced than its predecessor and would push the limits of the high-end PC’s. It was Crytek after all and pushing the boundaries was what they were best known for: “Anyway, will Crysis 2 have hi-res textures; will it get blurry? Crysis 2 will have a PC version that’s a PC game. We’re going to push it as much as the engine can take.” told Yerli to EDGE some time ago.

So how come Crysis 2 doesn’t support all those features that are present in the Samaritan tech demo. How come the title that showcases CryEngine 3 doesn’t stress high-end PC’s as much as its predecessor. And how on earth can Cevat compare the Samaritan tech demo with Crysis 2? Even if the DX11 patch adds most of the features that are supported in the Samaritan demo, we have to keep in mind that Epic’s tech demo was developed with those features in mind. They weren’t added later as an after thought. And it’s clear that Samaritan’s textures are of higher-res from those used in Crysis 2. Oh and Samaritan’s character models have more polies and details than Crysis 2’s characters.

Crytek missed the opportunity to offer a game that would truly showcase its engine. And it’s really sad witnessing such statements from Crytek’s CEO. If Cevat wants to prove his statements, he should at least offer something as mind-blowing as the Samaritan tech-demo, whether it demands a Tri-SLI system to run it ideally or not. Plain and simple!

About David Scarpitta

I am a critical guy, and love to review and give my professional opinion on just about anything. Though have a love for tech/gaming and music alongside the cinema. You can catch me consulting and developing the net any day of the week.
  • http://twitter.com/CoD511 CoD511

    What’s this opinion piece meant to achieve besides making it clear you have a dislike for Crytek?

  • German

    You moron… “unplayable” was meant to say “non-interactive”… as in cutscene… and usually, cutscenes aren’t playable!

    And the rest of this article… bleh… Really. It’s bad that Crysis 2 runs a bit better than Crysis 1 on the same PC (which is actually true for me)? Not that Crysis 2, in general, looks quite a lot better than it’s predecessor, but that it runs better too…

    I give you that it doesn’t support DX11, or even 10 for that matter (which the first one did, curiously), but… does that really matter? I mean… especially for consoles it doesn’t matter at all, since they both are “locked” into DX9 hardware anyways, and don’t even use DX at all either. PC will get a DX11 patch down the line, too.

    And… I give you that the texturework in Crysis 1 is better than in Crysis 2… but that’s about it.

    • john2

      You do realize that all CryEngine 3 tech demos that are way better than Crysis 2 were also ‘cut-scenes’ (or in your words ‘unplayable’ ), right? You also do realize that all those features that Cevat is stating are only present in CryEngine 3 tech demos (aka ‘unplayable’ in your words), right? You also do realize that procedural destruction is nowhere to be found in Crysis 2, even though Crysis 2 was supposed to ‘advertise’ what CryEngine 3 could do, right? Crysis 2 is actually full of scripted destruction sequences and the real-time destructibility is way limited.

      All in all, whether you want to believe or find ways to make Cevat’s statements believable… it’s up to you. I mean you could say that Cevat back then was stating that the DX11 patch will actually push the limits of most modern PC’s (even though Crytek didn’t have plans for a DX11 patch… but that’s another case). Or how about when they were stating they hadn’t shown proper, maxed out Crysis 2 PC screenshots and most fans expected incredible things?

      Just keep in mind that slapping some DX11 effects here and there doesn’t mean that the game is actually as good as if it was developed to take full advantage of them.

      • Phindersphee

        yeah….you’re as wrong as the author of this article. the videos you’re referring to were tech demos for the engine, not for crysis 2. the samaritan tech demo ran with 3 of the best nvidia cards on the market, maxing out everything just to push out those few minutes. it’s highly impressive, but even the people presenting it said that this wasn’t something attainable on current gen consoles, or even feasibly on high-end pcs out right now. cryengine 3 is super-powerful, as will the engine running samaritan, but the fact of the matter is, cryengine 3 is available and can utilize most, if not all, of the features present in samaritan. you were probably just too dazzled by the bokeh to see that, though. look at the modding community and what they’ve done with the first crysis’ engine, which is still one of the best pc engines out there. imagine what people are working on with the current engine.

        • john2

          History proves you wrong. In case you are new to PC gaming, Crysis was barely running smoothly even with a Tri-SLI GTX280 system at 1080p. Of course something like that is not attainable to current consoles. Hell, even Crysis 1 modded is not attainable to current consoles. PC’s on the other hand could benefit from a game like that. If you think about it, the example of the Samaritan tech demo is the perfect example actually of what we’d expect from Crytek’s next game. A PC game with the image fidelity of the Samaritan tech demo IS possible. Point is that there isn’t any developer taking that risk of pushing the graphical boundaries to the next level yet. Moreover, all games that currently use the CryEngine 3 look like sh!t. Crytek’s only hope is the modding community but guess what, the editor is not out yet.

          Keep also in mind that Yerli is not talking about CryEngine 3 in general but about Crysis 2, which is dumped down in almost everything. Oh and those fake reflections of CryEngine 3 can’t even come close to the ones of the latest Unreal 3 engine… but I guess you were dazzled by the pseudo-GI and didn’t notice them ;). Since you mentioned it, Bokeh was first used in Crysis 1 via a mod and then in Just Cause 2. It’s nothing new actually. The fact however that all those features are on steroids (if you get what I mean) is what makes the difference. Moreover, Cevat said that the ‘next-gen features’ of the Unreal 3 Engine were unplayable. Funny thing is that Epic Games could easily say that “If our features were as dumped down as in Crysis 2, the Samaritan Tech Demo would run perfectly with a single GPU”. If Cevat thinks that their engine is more efficient than Unreal 3 and can offer the same IQ with lower requirements, by all means they should demonstrate it. Till then, it’s a sad fact that they got ‘powned’.

          Crytek could build the game with the PC as the lead platform to demonstrate what the engine is capable of. I can assure you that if that was the case, the graphical jump would be similar. For Gods sake, they haven’t released yet the DX11 patch (something that… well it would have been implemented before release as the CryEngine 3 was supporting it according to the devs themselves).

  • Krieng

    It’s call tech demo because no average people have the machine that can run it.