Techland is back at it with Dying Light: The Beast, a title 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 up 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 made of cardboard. The C-Engine manages all that information with Ray Tracing that, instead of being a simple ornament, casts 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 make the C-Engine 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're going to need a graphics card worth more than your apartment. But hey, while your wallet weeps, at least the zombies will look so real you'll want to invite them to dinner.