Advancing Technologies and Modern Graphics Engines

All of us are aware about the Digital Revolution of the last twenty-five years and the rapidness of the development of various fields of digital technology. The computer games are doubtlessly one of the fields that have been experiencing constant development in various directions. The most demanding aspect of the technological advancement of the game is the graphics engine it is running on and the video-image. The speed of this advance is pleasing and good at one point, as we are given more and more realistic and beautiful games each year, but on the other hand it is very demanding from the hardware point of view, forcing the game enthusiasts to update their graphics cards on the yearly basis, as the cards are becoming outdated in a matter of months. In other words, as time passes the graphical aspect of the game is becoming more and more complex and developed, respectively they need stronger “iron”, i.e. graphics hardware. The action games have been a vanguard of the advanced most graphic engines for years and certainly if we are searching for the most innovative and powerful visual image among modern and upcoming games, the Action-genre is the where we should search for such examples. If we want to see the power of on of the most powerful engines that are already available nowadays, we should take a look at the engine of the newly released Action-game “Unreal Tournament 3”. Even stronger engines are coming up though. The legend of Game Design – John Carmack of the ID Software has announced the development of the new graphics engine “id Tech 4” on the 2007 Electronic Entertainment Expo. ID Software has been known for its revolutionary Action Games like “Quake” and “Doom” and these games were revolutionary not only the way they were played, but from the graphical point of view also. Now, the very same studio announced the new engine that is one of the most powerful engines to be known in existence. The first game to carry this engine will be “Heat” and it is expected to be released during the Summer of 2008. We don’t have the screenshots nor the system requirements yet, but it must be speculated that they are indeed heartbreaking.