They support these modern variations of MOD also.

By the way:
Here is a Unity real-time scene lighted by a HDRI image:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1412178/hdri_test.zip

Wow, that was f'ing awesome! Ahh... can't wait for the release of Unity 3.
(BTW Frank, is the gym in the scene just a skycube or it's a real 3D gym with DoF shader applied?) Oh sorry, you didn't made that demo.

The background is a HDRI image, some skycube with more precise lighting data and a larger light range compared to standard images.

This image is the only light source for the scene.

Reminds me on those old graphic cards tech demos But there you could play around with bloom and tone mapping parameters .
It is basicly just some environment mapping I guess? Where and how does the tone mapping happen?

Those lighshafts are nice, but they seem to be based on a too low resolution, which results in them being a bit jerky.
But this and the above are basicly already possible?

I love physics an wonder how easy those cloth physics will be to use. I also wonder about the lightmapper and the new shader system. Those screenshots and demos and videos are all nice, but they don´t show much. The most important is not that something is possible, because everything already is possible, but the question is how. How fast and how easy.

Yes, I am also interested in this, just like many people asking in the Unity forum. And the links above are some fast-made demos from Beta-testers. They are not from the Unity-guys. So they are probably not perfect, dont have much sliders for tone-mapping and other nice-too-have.

But I find it exciting anyway and I am looking forward to Unity3. This Beast-lightmapping integration together with HDRI can create some beautiful stuff alone. I already saw some how-to-use demos from Beta-testers and it looks really easy to use.

Yeah Unity 3D is very artist oriented, that why it has such succes on some 3D artists forums where there are AAA artists

I think , like usually, new features will be really easy to use, by some simple drag and drop or on a special panel.

Unity actually isn´t easy to use. While I like their code system, it is probably more demanding than gamestudios.
But their editor is nice of course, that just isn´t enough to create good games .
I btw just added a shader to their Wiki .

I think this is just a matter of the point of view and the historical background of each one.

I have read some reviews from C++ coders coming from C4 or Torque and they find Unity quite easy.

I programmed a lot of business tools in my past (Delphi, PHP, C++, Java). And I like C# much more than a limited scripting language. And since I bought lots of components for my business projects, I am also used to a components approach. It indeed differs a bit in Unity, it is not the same like in Delphi for example, but the idea is the same and integration in a project is just drag and drop in the end.
I know from experience that components are a very good approach for rapid application development. I can plugin new technology very fast this way without losing my existing solutions. And I can even exchange such components against new versions without adapting a single line of code.

From my point of view this is absolutely a future technology.

Yeah i guess its a matter of taste too.
I find Unity much easier than any other engine i used before and i love that component style too, and i just fell in love with C#, it's a wonderful language.