unity big advantage is the documentation and the java script is not a proprietary language. So if you want your game up and running I wouldn't suggest you to go with udk. There is not official support on scripting.

so yeah most people will find interesting to play with the engine great feature but in the end if you don't have a programming background it can be harsh.

But I used it and since I Don't mind getting my hand dirty it's fine for me. But I would suggest for most of people doing casual game or middle size game to go with unity. I just don't like the lack of shadowing support on the free version.

Hm, shadow seems to work. Ambient Occlusion, Blobshadow, all there. I was at least able to create a lightmap for the terrain. But even when not, there would be Giles as an alternative lightmapper

That walking through foliage is awesome but at a second thought I'd prefer a certain degree of DIY in an engine. So this is the difference between authoring and engine. On the other hand I wouldn't go make a game in pure C++. But I like A7 approach overall except for some flags settings which are cumbersome to match. I'm a beginner both in programming and 3D gaming and I'm currently looking for the right tool to make my own projects. Too bad there are ups and downs for each engine. So it's difficult to pick. But I'd like you to tell me from the speed (performance) point of view -- which one is the fastest from the above mentioned engines?
I've seen that the Unity default example (the one with nature, water and seagulls can't remember the name) looks very rich and it doesn't go below 60 FPS on my PC. Maybe it's because the trees and foliage (very dense) are not objects. Plus Unity has a great thing which A7 hasn't IMO: replacing 3D models with billboards at a distance. What I find unpleasant is the message system: create message, send it to a certain instance then go there and receive it. Haven't played with it much but I think it's a system for... handling events?
As for A7, the endless terrain with 9 views and thousands of visible instances outputting 30 FPS is a performance too. Not Unity's 60 FPS but so many simultaneous instances and views...
There is Torque 3D but in the default FPS example on a completely blank terrain only with the player it output like 60-70 FPS. So disappointing...
Now more to the topic: never tried UDK but I'm very interested in the FPS(frames per second)yield. It would've been perfect if someone could compare _the same_ game on all 3 engines -- same models, billboards, shaders etc. You might say that speed isn't everything. But I'd say that for me it is. And besides that if one engine is easy to work with but it's slow compared to an exactly opposite engine, I'd call they're of the same value.

Maybe it is limited to your monitor frequency (mostly 60 Hz). So it will not go higher than 60. This way you cannot compare 60 to 60 in different engines. You have to remove this limit or use a more dense test scene rendering with less than 60.



Yes, I am also interested in this. And I will do that in the near future with a more complex sci-fi interior set. But in this case the indoor scene-management will be the most important part to do a good culling job and to create as few as possible render jobs for the graphic card.

It also depends on the size of textures. I realized that I can render and optimize a lot in C4, but when textures get bigger (couple of 2048px textures) then it slows down, but UDK can still run fast with big textures. It is probably the smart virtual texture system they use.
Unity is currently not very fast with big interiors. But the upcoming version 3 will have a professional culling system (Umbra). This will change the situation a lot.

For outdoors this changes again. Unity has some optimized nature shaders and a good lod system. UDK got some new foliage features, but I found the april demo not very convincing.

In the end we really need a stress test, but this is not too easy. In C4 I have to create zones and portals manually to get good performance. I can even place some occlusion portals for big columns. I can setup lights not render shadow volumes each frame and so on.
When there is Umbra in Unity then we also have to setup some occlusion areas, dont know how to do at the moment.

And when we compare terrains then it is the same. We have to understand how the engines handle lod, materials, transparency, how to make a terrain with the engine tools, how to create water (with or without reflections) and so on.

It will be not possible to create absolute identical situations for each engine, but it might be possible to come to an at least similar scenery.

You mean vertical sync? When I look up to the sky the FPS goes from 30 to 40 in some cases and stays there, and from 60 to 72 in others. So there's no cap.
As for the comparison I'm suspecting they don't want to make some facts public -- imagine the impact. For the moment, one is easier, the other has an extra feature, bla bla blaaa... you know, it's arguable, one likes the features, other prefer workflow... can't say one it's better than the other so a comparison can't be made as there's no solid criterion. But when it comes about speed you can tell not only if one particular engine trades speed for workflow (like say, scripting replacing C++) but more important -- you can tell very much about the architecture, if it's well done, even if the engine uses scripting. Conversely, even if an engine is C++ oriented but has an improvement of only a few FPS then you can tell that it's not worth it. That's why we need a common denominator.
You had to learn their performance issues by practice, I suppose. and it's clear that you know what you're talking about.
About the large texture in C4, you made a point. Actually, it was (one of) my favorite. But I saw this video with a large, actually humongous spaceship on YouTube in Unity compared to C4 and the results were propostruous. I liked C4 for the voxel terrain. Again there's the default example with the graveyard and it only yielded 30 FPS with not many instances or substantial geometry. But you say you have to do the BSP tree manually?
I have some second thoughts about Unity because of the message thing and the web and iPhone things. I might be talking nonsense but man I want a PC robust game engine, plain and simple with straight forward output, something opposed to complicated, clogged and why not -- opposed to complex.
Sorry if I deviated from the topic. Anyway, I look forward to seeing if the same demo, any demo, is made in several engines.

It is not exactly a BSP. It has the same goal to create good culling but it works differently. The difference compared to the Gamestudio BSP system is: You have to create zones and portals manually. You can control it in a very professional way. It takes more time to setup but it does not need compiling time and can render faster in the end.

I am also very curious about the stress test results. I plan to test this scene in Unity, C4 and Torque3D, with different texture sizes and different polygon numbers.
It could also be done in Gamestudio, Neoaxis, Leadwerks, Shiva and Esenthel. But my time is limited. Though I might ask for help then in the respective forums.

I've bookmarked this thread

Just as an addition:

The upcoming A8 allows to do some more manual optimizing using regions:
http://www.conitec.net/beta/region_create.htm

I've been playing around with UDK lately , and it's BEAUTIFUL. The workflow seems pretty straight forward , level editor is very nice and easy to use , it's technology is top of the line. Fantastic , it's as good as it gets. And on top of all of that , you can use all of the included code for commercial applications as well. What more can one ask for ?

Btw , here is a page where you can download a bunch of UDK training videos that show you how to use everything from the editor to physics , the videos are very good and if your familiar with a game engine like GameStudio you will pick up UDK almost instantly after watching them.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/VideoTutorials.html

When you load the page just scroll down to where it says 3D Buzz Video Tutorials.