New Graphics Engine

[Jaws2002]

Originally Posted by Chivas

No part of the Performance/graphic engine rewrite has been released. They did release tweaks to the old graphic engine, but found it wasn't going to work, and then decided to do the total rewrite of the graphic engine to fix the performance and CTD issues. There is no such thing as a quick fix major graphic engine rewrite.

August 6 2011 update:

"1. Graphics. Our graphics team is in the middle of a dramatic revision of our graphics engine. The new engine, still in alpha stage, is both faster and better looking. I won’t get into the technical details, but in a word it’s faster and more streamlined. From the appearance point of view, the change is equally as dramatic but is easier seen. Colors are calculated differently, especially in terms of distance. I’m attaching some screenshots showing before and after. The colors are not yet tuned, and there are some other issues but we are much happier with the game’s visuals today than we’ve been for quite some time."

Some of those changes were introduced in the next patch, the one we have now. The patch notes also said, they are in the final stages of testing for this "new" engine.:

From the patch notes of the current version released october 17. :

"MAIN * Drastically reworked graphic algorithms dealing with in-game color;
.....


3. Performance. We are in final stages of testing a thorough overhaul of the game’s graphic engine. It won’t look any different but it will be much more streamlined. It’s too early to say what the FPS increase will be in the final version, but it shouldn’t be less than 50%."


So, as you said. There's no such a thing as quick fix new graphics engine..... they found out the hard way.

I' just curious how much beauty was lost with this engine change. I hope they can restore the reflections.