Here is another interesting piece.
The most immediately apparent upgrades concern motion blur, lighting and shadowing. As virtually all Unreal Engine 3 titles on console (bar the Mortal Kombat titles) have operated at the 30FPS level, motion blur is essential in giving a smoother look to the visuals. Camera-based motion blur in Gears 3 has been improved significantly over previous iterations, with a much better blending effect utilised.
Also of note is the introduction of a really effective object-based motion blur. OBM has only been used sporadically in previous UE3 titles (such as Mass Effect 2) and even then in a very limited, barely noticeable manner. The quality of the effect seen in Gears 3 is more along the lines of that seen in Killzone 3 and God of War III, and represents a significant leap forward for Unreal Engine 3 - we even see individual levels of motion blur being employed on different parts of the main character's body: if one arm is moving faster than the other, that will be reflected in the amount of blur being applied. This is called "motion blur skinning" by Epic, and according to its own documentation, it is currently only utilised on Xbox 360 and PC, with possible performance implications for this style of implementation if it were added to the PS3 version of UE3.
The overall effect is impressive: the game may well operate on the same baseline frame-rate as its predecessors, but there's little doubt that to the human eye it looks significantly smoother.
