Source: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2011/03/epic-unreal-engine-demo-gdc/

SAN FRANCISCO — What will videogames look like in the near future? Epic Games offered a glimpse at the future of graphics in the form of a real-time animation demo that showed off the eye-popping capabilities of the upgraded Unreal Engine 3.

The industry’s biggest game-technology maker showed off the two-minute scene, called “Samaritan,” at the Game Developers Conference here Thursday. The demo highlights the power of Epic’s latest version of Unreal Engine 3, a tool that powers the amazing visuals in games like Gears of War.
`
“We call this our love letter to developers,” said Epic Vice President Mark Rein.

The improved gaming engine boasts many new graphical features, which Epic will soon be providing to its partners, who have used it to make titles like BioShock and Mass Effect.

The demo was created by a 12-person team in about two months, Epic Games President Michael Capps said during a Thursday press briefing at GDC. “Samaritan” was running on a custom-built system using off-the-shelf PC parts, Epic said, including three Nvidia GTX 580 graphics cards, which cost about $500 each.

Very few if any consumers today would be able to run the demo, but with the rapid advancement of technology, it’s not unlikely that we’ll be playing something that looks like this before too long.

“We have a pretty good idea of what’s coming next,” said Capps, who added that Epic is already in preproduction on a brand new title for the next generation of game machines.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a video (offscreen) of the newest unreal engine tech demo! Will the game they're working on look like this!? :O

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3XeCHywNYM

If someone can embed the video... :P

did'nt you already post this are something like this,just minutes ago. 

Yeah, but it deserves its own thread :P otherwise it'd get lost in the comments of the other thread and few people would see it

Wow, and what were Crytek saying when they were boasting about the CryEngine3. Also guess that means the Unreal Engine 4 is even further away than theyve been letting on.

Wondering when the first game using this version gets released. Likely will be a bit dumbed down due to tech-limitations though.

Three GTX 580? Oh man. Give four years at least before games start to casually look like this.

*frowns*

ngp gears baby! who loves you baby!? Epic loves you baby! Yeah!

lol

on a serious note, new game reveals = always good I don't care who it's from, so looking 4wrd to it

Looks beautiful and can't wait to see what kind of stuff they'll be able to do next-gen.  Here's the video embedded for anyone who wants to watch it.

Thanks.

So was that rendered in real time or pre-rendered?

I hope next gen will look that good.

It was all real-time rendering which makes that tech demo even more jaw dropping.  Epic proved it by pausing it moving the camera around freely, turning off things like shaders and stuff in real time to show the differences with it on and off and other stuff like that.  Needless to say if games look this incredible while I'm playing them next-gen i will be MORE than happy because there hasn't ever been a game released with this level of graphics in game before FOR SURE.