Crytek: CryEngine 3 is as good as Unreal Engine 4

CryEngine 3 is a match for Epic's recently announced Unreal Engine 4, despite Crytek's system launching a number of years ago, so says the German developer.

Speaking in an interview with Venturebeat, founder Cevat Yerli explained that its engine is already next-gen ready and its capabilities are on a par with Epic's new tech.

"The only thing I can say is that CryEngine 3 already exists at the quality of Unreal Engine 4," he claimed.

"It already exists for three years now. You can go back three years ago to the GDC videos. What we put out there is pretty much what Unreal Engine 4 put out now. And what many others are doing now too. We haven't really put out our latest stuff yet.

"We already said, CryEngine 3 is next-gen ready since three years ago," he added.

"We stand by that. If I look at what people call next-gen technology now, it's what we were seeing three years ago. We already had massive particle systems, we already had GPU rendering, all these things. Deferred shading. We had tessellation already since we shipped Crysis 2. We already had DX11. We didn't just talk it up as tech demos, we have games that are shipped and are doing it."

Elsewhere in the interview, Yerli also discussed what the next major goalposts are for video game developers in terms of visuals.

"I think we are going to be very close soon to rendering computer-generated film quality. I'm not necessarily pointing to Pixar. But we will, very soon, be able to render out film CG quality rendering in real-time. In the next two years," he speculated.

"I said already a couple of years ago, we'll be able to do Shrek-quality graphics in 2012, and we can today. In 2008 I gave a speech on the future of computer graphics, I said in 2012 we'll have Shrek quality, and today we are Shrek quality.

"I think in two years more… But then again, film will be further head as well. And then we'll catch up again. It's going to be like that for a while."

Crytek currently has a packed schedule - it's working on Crysis 3 and Homefront 2 for EA and THQ respectively, while also forging ahead with its new free-to-play FPS Warface.

See below to remind yourselves what Epic's competing UE4 engine is capable of.