i just utilized 1 hour of my time reading through this thread learning about techy stuff lol good thread with an agenda, but good nevertheless.

I agree, the ue3 engine has done a lot of good, but any company who has a console on the market should be spending some money of creating engines to make the most of the console. It only makes sense to be able to prove what your machine is capable of doing and it is a shame the 360 hasn't been able to do this a lot. SO hats off ti remedy and bungie for making something to optimise use of the 360 hardware.

Either way, as much as the techy stuff is a wow factor, the bottom line is and always will be the end result. Even if AW uses some unheard of never been used be fore tech, the accomplishments of KZ2, U2, HR and GOW3 are just amazing. Its not just about jaggies and smoothing, it is the many factors that come together to display the final product which is amazing:

1) How KZ2 has debris, smoke, lightning, soldiers, vehicles, turrets, insects, fire, wind, dust, fog and other things put together in one place to give the sense of an all out war and chaos.

2) how uncharted 2 has foliage, colours, soldiers, weather, lighting etc and how it can manage to calculate all these things along with collapsible buildings and moving scenery still maintaining a smooth transition, not taking a hit in the visuals and allowing the gamer to carry on playing.

3) how gow3 has huge scale living, breathing titans and where their movement requires objects around them and on them to constantly calculate where they are and how the movement is affecting them and yet still have crisp visuals and lots of enemies on screen with all sorts of other thing going on at the same time.

obviously graphics arent the all and everything in games, but since this is what this whole debate is about- the techy stuff which offers better or never been seen before visuals, I thought i would share my 2 cents.

I am looking forward to Halo Reach more than Alan Wake. The gameplay doesn't interest me as much as HAlo Reach and I love the darker approach Halo bungie has chosen. Also, I am keen on seeing these epic large scale battles Halo Reach is becoming known for during the fps. is there any sp Halo Reach footage anywhere :S

Unreal Engine is still one of the finest out there and can't be blamed for not tapping EDRAM chip potential. Gears 1 was definitely a treat around the time it released.

 As time passed Dev's initially learned that the EDRAM chip can be used to render images in 4XMSAA, so with code compiling and game testing, they must have reduced or optimized the rendering to 2X or less like what we see in Gears 2(select objects) to enchance perfromance. Halo Reach and Alan Wake should be the new games that should change the way this console puts the rendering into effect with innovative engine. I feel Alan Wake should be a very fine game and most impressive in terms of gfx (full 4XMSAA)when released.