Just wondering, from what I am reading, and what I am seeing, the "Creation Engine" for all intents appears to be a moderately modified Gamebryo engine. Has it actually be confirmed that this is a a brand new engine? I have had experience working with Unreal, Source, Cryengine and NWN, and I can honestly say that the statements about the map being divided into cells just like oblivion, having almost the same map size and cell size as oblivion, the overall appearance and details like houses still being in seperate cells to me all points to it being pretty much the same engine. For those who have experienced working with other engines you might agree these details do seem to point to it being the same engine...

The reason I am curious is I intend to mod and details like these are useful, and I also am curious from a technical standpoint since I felt Gamebryo was rather garbage.

I'm sort of relieved they heavily modified Gamebryo instead of making an all-new engine.

An all-new engine means all-new problems. Gamebryo is quite solid, all they have to do is iron out problems like:

-Objects getting squished into scenery and spazzing out
-Things falling through scenery
-Every single face looking ugly

Hi there, I'm a game developer myself ( http://hardcodex.com/ ), so I hope it lends some weight to my words.

First of all, if we're talking about a company that's doing a series of games, there's no such thing as a "brand new" engine, in the sense that no one would be stupid enough to throw a massive amount of man hours into the trash bin just to get a "fresh start". If you look at the id Tech engine progression (Quake - Quake 2 - Quake 3 - Doom 3), each step represents a modification of the previous one (it's pretty safe to make such conclusions since the full source code for Quakes and roughly half of the source code for Doom 3 is publicly available). In some cases, when modifications had been significant (e.g., Quake 2 vs. Quake 3), the next engine was labeled as a "new" one; in the case of Quake vs. Quake 2 transition, they both represent the same "id Tech 2" generation, because Q2 was basically Q1 retrofitted with colored lightmaps. Still, even we take a look at Q2 vs. Q3, the next engine was obviously based on the previous one.

Consider this as well: if you're developing an engine completely from scratch, your level design team will be sitting idle for most of the first phase of development.

So, to reiterate that: any engine Bethesda is working on is most likely a modification of Gamebryo as it was seen in Fallout 3; however, since they're giving it a new name, updates to it must be significant/are seen as such by Bethesda (I hope you can catch the slight difference here).

However, these updates will mostly touch the overall world structure, AI and general NPC behavior etc. In terms of graphics, don't expect Skyrim to be revolutionary, simply because no revolutionary effects/techniques have been developed in the meantime. CG is very much like contemporary science in this respect: once someone develops something new, they try to get out a paper as soon as they can to "stake their claim". Once Carmack developed Megatexture tech, the news was out, even before any games using it were released; immediately after developing & testing their SSAO method, Crytek issued a paper on the subject.

However, there are some visual features you can expect from Skyrim:

- most likely, they will update to the current version of SpeedTree ( http://www.speedtree.com ) which they've been using for rendering trees & vegetation, so you can expect more realistic & detailed things in this department;
- overall, the level of detail will definitely increase;
- from what I can gather from the screenshots, they'll use dynamic shadows for omnidirectional light sources (lamps, candelabra etc.) and hopefully for directional sources as well (sun, moons); however, the latter needs to be verified;
- most likely, they'll get you ambient shadows as well, using the aforementioned Crytek's SSAO tech ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_Space_Ambient_Occlusion );
- a pure speculation here, but I really hope they'll develop a more diverse landscape model, as opposed to Oblivion's rather "flat" one.

Also, you can expect Skyrim to have a different "look and feel" (a more bleak one for sure), meaning they'll tweak the HDR parameters, possibly reduce specular effect to make it less "shiny" etc.

Ok, let me add some clarity here. Bethesda started MW using a proprietary engine constructed from various middle ware all found in the Gamebryo kit. The Gamebryo middle ware kit has a renderer and game file formats(those belong to Gamebryo) and a host of 3rd party middle ware such as Havok and Speedtree.

How Bethesda puts those components together is solely their creation(as is the CK) and the only thing that makes it a "Gamebryo" engine is the presence of the Gamebryo renderer. All the other middle ware can be licensed directly from their creators.

Over the years Bethesda has built their own versions of most of the middle ware they had previously licensed. Once they built their own renderer they can then call the engine their own at last regardless of still licensing some middle ware such as Havok Behavior and continuing to put the components together the same way as before.

- most likely, they will update to the current version of SpeedTree ( http://www.speedtree.com ) which they've been using for rendering trees & vegetation, so you can expect more realistic & detailed things in this department;- overall, the level of detail will definitely increase;
- from what I can gather from the screenshots, they'll use dynamic shadows for omnidirectional light sources (lamps, candelabra etc.) and hopefully for directional sources as well (sun, moons); however, the latter needs to be verified;
- most likely, they'll get you ambient shadows as well, using the aforementioned Crytek's SSAO tech ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_Space_Ambient_Occlusion );
- a pure speculation here, but I really hope they'll develop a more diverse landscape model, as opposed to Oblivion's rather "flat" one.Also, you can expect Skyrim to have a different "look and feel" (a more bleak one for sure), meaning they'll tweak the HDR parameters, possibly reduce specular effect to make it less "shiny" etc.

I don't mean to be funny.But in the last part of your post you say things like:Most likely or from what you can gather ( in my eyes meaning ) you quessing/speculating etc ( not 100% sure ).How does that lend weight exactly?"overall.the level, of detail will definitely increase" I think 90% of us could have quessed that.No offense,but i would like the information from the horses mouth.Just my opinion.

- Already confirmed to be using their own tree builder. http://www.gamestar.de/_misc/images/original.cfm?pk=2198719, infinitely better than the SpeedTree 3/4 trees in Oblivion.
- There are very obvious sun shadows (http://www.gamereactor.se/media/59/elderscrolls5_235967b.jpg, http://www.gamestar.de/_misc/images/original.cfm?pk=2198720)
- There is no visual evidence for SSAO. I've had to hand-edit it into photos myself to show people what the effect would bring.
- I think http://www.gamestar.de/_misc/images/original.cfm?pk=2198717.


See above. He knows a lot about game engines (I know quite a bit myself) but he apparently hasn't read up enough on Skyrim itself for the speculation to mean much / be very accurate.

Forget DX11 support, Console doesn t have it. and Bethesda is a Console company porting to PC, so no DX 11 until next console generation.
And i forgot, unless the do an entire interface for PC, expect no mouse programation for more modern mouses and limited keyboard programation as well.

Just wondering, from what I am reading, and what I am seeing, the "Creation Engine" for all intents appears to be a moderately modified Gamebryo engine. Has it actually be confirmed that this is a a brand new engine? I have had experience working with Unreal, Source, Cryengine and NWN, and I can honestly say that the statements about the map being divided into cells just like oblivion, having almost the same map size and cell size as oblivion, the overall appearance and details like houses still being in seperate cells to me all points to it being pretty much the same engine. For those who have experienced working with other engines you might agree these details do seem to point to it being the same engine...

The reason I am curious is I intend to mod and details like these are useful, and I also am curious from a technical standpoint since I felt Gamebryo was rather garbage.

And i forgot, unless the do an entire interface for PC, expect no mouse programation for more modern mouses and limited keyboard programation as well.