The Future of Game Graphics according to Crytek

Cevat Yerli has given a keynote at GDC Europe about Crytek's next engine and its rendering techniques. Incrysis has pictures of the keynote slides: http://www.incrysis.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=818&Itemid=1

Two interesting slides:





According to Cevat Yerli, their next generation engine will use a mix of ray tracing, rasterization, point based rendering and SVO: (Google translation from http://www.golem.de/0908/69105.html)

Yerli has also talked about the technique a year ago, other graphics programmers like John Carmack or Jon Olick are also researching it. According to Yerli Sparse Voxel Octrees will form the base for the next version of its Cryengine - but will be ready only in a few years .

From http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=24865

He then focused on the actual technical innovations that he feels will make a difference in graphics. For example, tech like point-based rendering is potentially faster than triangle-based rendering at certain higher qualities, and works well with levels of detail.

On the other hand point-based rendering might define a certain super-high polygon look for game, Yerli said. However: "There's a lot of games today in the Top 10 which don't need that", he conceded, and content creation tools are almost exclusively based around triangles right now.

He also noted ray-tracing as a possible rendering method to move towards, and particularly recommended rasterization and sparse voxel octrees for rendering. Such principles will form "the core" of future technology for Crytek's next engine, Yerli said, and the goal is to "render the entire world" with the voxel data structure.

Concluding, Yerli suggested that, after 2013, there are opportunities with new APIs and hardware platforms to "mix and match" between multiple rendering models, with "a Renaissance of graphics programming", and visual fidelity on a par with movies such as Shrek and Ice Age rendered in real time.