Techland is back at it with Dying Light: The Beast, a release that pushes its proprietary C-Engine to the limit. The game bets on aggressive photorealism, with dynamic global illumination and ray tracing for reflections and shadows. The environments are dense and detailed, a perfect scenario to make your hardware sweat bullets.
Maya, ZBrush, and Houdini: the holy trinity of detail 🎨
Modeling has been cooked in Maya and ZBrush, while Substance Painter handles textures that deceive the eye. The icing on the cake is Houdini, generating procedural geometry so the scenarios don't look like they're from a cardboard set. The C-Engine manages all that information with Ray Tracing that, instead of being a mere ornament, delivers shadows and reflections with frightening precision. All of this, of course, assuming your graphics card doesn't start crying.
Ray Tracing eats your RAM, but it's so beautiful 💀
Techland has managed to get the C-Engine to render even the last puddle with a level of detail that puts competing engines to shame. The problem is that to enjoy such a pixel extravaganza, you'll need a graphics card worth more than your apartment. But hey, while your wallet cries, at least the zombies will look so real you'll want to invite them to dinner.