7 ms·

VR First by Crytek

118 points by lentil_soup 11y ago

k__ 11y ago
They're still in business? Serious question. I heard they went down, after the criticism about how they treat their employees. Just wanted to know if it's still the old company or someone bought the name and tech and does his own thing now...
- patates 11y ago
  I think this is a fair question to ask. There were so many rumors about them going under and it's a known fact that they couldn't pay wages last year for some months, losing some talent. After a secret investment though, they seem to be back on track. I wish they return back to their glorious days. My worry would be them not being able to recover with the additional funds and such great technology being orphaned. Cryengine is still as good as it gets from the beauty and realism perspective, IMHO.
  - SeanBoocock 11y ago
    Here is more context for those rumors: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/crytek-lays-off-staff-after-selling-homefront-cryt/1100-6421398/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/crytek-lays-off-staff-after.... Crytek did not pay their Austin based studio employees for several months before the studio was officially shutdown. I have worked with several people who had worked at Crytek USA for the duration of its existence and their stories left me with a very poor impression of the stability and integrity of Crytek as a business. It would be good to see Crytek turn things around - they were at one point technology leaders in game development - but I have my doubts that VR represents the right opportunity to do that, at least in the short term.
    - theandrewbailey 11y ago
      The layoffs were unfortunate, but it seems that many of them eventually got hired by Cloud Imperium, the Star Citizen developers. They have effectively hired some of the people who made their third-party engine!
- louhike 11y ago
  According to Wikipedia [1], there was a restructuration. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crytek#Restructuring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crytek#Restructuring
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Sadly the situation at Crytek is just how things are in the games industry and the only way to avoid it is to work in another industry instead. So no, they didn't went down for following what everyone else does. They just had some sales problems and did fire some people, just like many studios do. This might be a pivot idea, given thant Unreal and Unity3D are also doing it.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    Or work for an indie company. I imagine that's not nearly as rife with poor treatment.
    - pjmlp 11y ago
      Depends what type of indie, as most follow the same patterns. You just have to dive into Gamasutra's postmortem or similar.
- throwthrow987 11y ago
  Current employee here. We are def in business, we had some money issues like others mentioned more than a year ago but things are looking much better now. We have a few projects announced, signed and in full development and the engine is getting a lot of love as well with some key new hires.
  - ekianjo 11y ago
    Is there anything you can say about Linux support ? I think you have announced several times that Linux support is active, but I have not seen any port of CryEngine games to Linux so far.
  - Aoyagi 11y ago
    >just at the right time That's great to hear if it means what I think it means. I hate how every bloody game engine discussion ends up at circlejerking about UE4, which, frankly, doesn't impress me all that much as a consumer.
- bitL 11y ago
  They had some money issues with free-to-play/gface failure, in addition Microsoft tried to rape them once they sensed they were weak (Rise franchise rights) but in the end they had some mysterious investment that kept them alive. Would be pity to lose them in any case.
magicmu 11y ago
Great idea! It'll really be good for universities to start developing the infrastructure for VR courses, which I would imagine could easily be prohibitively expensive without something like this. Interesting angle by Cryengine as well, it seems like the benefit for them is getting more new game devs to use their platform. I wonder what the story is behind using Bahçeşehir as their flagship school -- Turkey I can see, since there's a big push for technological literacy there right now, but I would think a school like Boğaziçi or Galatasaray would be higher up on the list.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Probably related to its founders. Aren't they of Turkish origin?
  - patates 11y ago
    The founders are German-born children of a Turkish family who migrated to Germany.
    - magicmu 11y ago
      Ahh there we go. Still an interesting choice of university though, I would imagine some of the more high-profile schools would've been higher up on their list. Who knows what goes into those decisions though.
ogreveins 11y ago
I worked with cryengine for nearly a year before giving up and moving on to UE4 where I already had source code access without being admitted to an incubator. Hopefully something good comes out of this initiative but I'm not holding my breath. When you start learning an engine or any framework the ecosystem and community are instrumental in making your life easier and getting some sort of camaraderie. Just my 2c.
- meeper16 11y ago
  As for the people investing in VR... https://gfycat.com/SafeWatchfulAmbushbug https://gfycat.com/SafeWatchfulAmbushbug
- mentos 11y ago
  I've been working with UE4 for 2 years now and its been the 2 most exciting years of my life. The tools are great but the community is even greater. I've never felt more empowered to create. UE4 has won this generation of game engines in my eye, I think crytek should take a step back and re-evaluate everything. Maybe they learn from UE4 and compete with UE5 in a few more years or maybe they boldly fork UE4 and add their value as a 3rd party fork/plugin. I think the sunk costs are too large but I'd love to see Valve fork UE4 and put their engineering might next to Epic's. Would love to hear why this thought of mine is naive/misguided.
  - jeswin 11y ago
    >I think the sunk costs are too large but I'd love to see Valve fork UE4 and put their engineering might next to Epic's. Would love to hear why this thought of mine is naive/misguided. UE4 source code isn't open source (to fork), though the code is available to look at. One could reimplement it, but the engineering effort will be monstrous.
    - adventured 11y ago
      You can in fact fork it. You can do almost anything you want to with it, so long as you obey the EULA and pay any royalties owed. https://www.unrealengine.com/faq https://www.unrealengine.com/faq "What modifications can I make to the source code?" "You can extend it, modify it, fork it, or integrate it with other software or libraries, with one exception: You can’t combine the Unreal Engine code with code covered by a “Copyleft” license agreement which would directly or indirectly require the Unreal Engine to be governed by terms other than the EULA."
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
"Lead the way", "define the future" Lot of assumptions given: "Ground floor"
chronial 11y ago
Am I the only one getting a distinctly dystopian (/cyberpunk) vibe from the video on that page? I don't mean the text/content – just the general vibe of the clip.
- pointernil 11y ago
  Same here. A strange mixture of "Man in the Highcastle" cross "Better of Ted" vibe /scnr
- Simp 11y ago
  The voice might be computer generated, if it is, it's really well done.
jpeg_hero 11y ago
Maybe this can help with the 2045 initiative? http://youtu.be/01hbkh4hXEk http://youtu.be/01hbkh4hXEk
rboyd 11y ago
The VR labs sound great, but maybe not enough to offer a material advantage. The next stage of the game engine wars will be fought and won over how the developers extend the designer app with VR UI, enabling creating VR (or traditional) games/experiences from within VR. I'm sure they're all already plotting this on the roadmap, even if they're not vocal about the specifics yet.
nickysielicki 11y ago
Is there anyone else here, who has used VR in the form of an HMD, that thinks this is all just a passing fad that will fail miserably? Can I note for a moment that this technology has been hyped since 2012 and we're only seeing the first consumer-facing products now? One of which is nothing other than Google Cardboard (GearVR) and one which is $600? The only real attempt at targeting consumers is coming from Sony, and it costs nearly as much as the console itself does. This is still decidedly a hobbyist market, and it doesn't look like that will change for another year at least. But let's put the price of adoption aside for a moment and assume that at some point it will come down in price. Even then I can't imagine that the average household will be buying this. For one, you wouldn't want to use an HMD in any context other than sitting alone in a room, and that's something that the nerdy hobbyist market doesn't mind, but to the average person it makes it nothing other than a novel toy. I keep hearing people on CNBC talk about how this year the Superbowl will be able to be watched via an HMD, and how this is the future of media. Are they serious? Have they ever heard of a Superbowl party? I watch football around friends, and we enjoy good food and beers. It's a social event first, and a content event second. How does an HMD fit into that? It doesn't. And I think most media we have today (save for video games) are social events. I watched the Breaking Bad finale with friends. I watch scary movies with friends. And that's not to say that I don't sometimes watch things alone, but when content creators have to worry about accommodating both of these experiences, it's difficult to make the VR experience comparatively worthwhile. VR content is going to face the same fate as 3D movies do today. It might be the evolution of video games. But that's a far cry from the hype that it gets. I think that the evolution of Google Glass is what will really take off.
- pierre 11y ago
  I was doubtfull about VR until I get a gearVR some weeks ago. I now spend ~1 hour a day using it to watch netflix. Some game (drift, lands end) were interesting to play but content is lacking. Bigger TV screen for cheap that follow where you look seems like to be the killer VR feature. I can see it get a wide adoption.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- 11y ago

118 points by lentil_soup 11y ago

k__ 11y ago

They're still in business? Serious question. I heard they went down, after the criticism about how they treat their employees. Just wanted to know if it's still the old company or someone bought the name and tech and does his own thing now...

patates 11y ago
I think this is a fair question to ask. There were so many rumors about them going under and it's a known fact that they couldn't pay wages last year for some months, losing some talent. After a secret investment though, they seem to be back on track. I wish they return back to their glorious days. My worry would be them not being able to recover with the additional funds and such great technology being orphaned. Cryengine is still as good as it gets from the beauty and realism perspective, IMHO.
- SeanBoocock 11y ago
  Here is more context for those rumors: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/crytek-lays-off-staff-after-selling-homefront-cryt/1100-6421398/ http://www.gamespot.com/articles/crytek-lays-off-staff-after.... Crytek did not pay their Austin based studio employees for several months before the studio was officially shutdown. I have worked with several people who had worked at Crytek USA for the duration of its existence and their stories left me with a very poor impression of the stability and integrity of Crytek as a business. It would be good to see Crytek turn things around - they were at one point technology leaders in game development - but I have my doubts that VR represents the right opportunity to do that, at least in the short term.
  - theandrewbailey 11y ago
    The layoffs were unfortunate, but it seems that many of them eventually got hired by Cloud Imperium, the Star Citizen developers. They have effectively hired some of the people who made their third-party engine!
louhike 11y ago
According to Wikipedia [1], there was a restructuration. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crytek#Restructuring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crytek#Restructuring
pjmlp 11y ago
Sadly the situation at Crytek is just how things are in the games industry and the only way to avoid it is to work in another industry instead. So no, they didn't went down for following what everyone else does. They just had some sales problems and did fire some people, just like many studios do. This might be a pivot idea, given thant Unreal and Unity3D are also doing it.
- kbenson 11y ago
  Or work for an indie company. I imagine that's not nearly as rife with poor treatment.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Depends what type of indie, as most follow the same patterns. You just have to dive into Gamasutra's postmortem or similar.
throwthrow987 11y ago
Current employee here. We are def in business, we had some money issues like others mentioned more than a year ago but things are looking much better now. We have a few projects announced, signed and in full development and the engine is getting a lot of love as well with some key new hires.
- ekianjo 11y ago
  Is there anything you can say about Linux support ? I think you have announced several times that Linux support is active, but I have not seen any port of CryEngine games to Linux so far.
- Aoyagi 11y ago
  >just at the right time That's great to hear if it means what I think it means. I hate how every bloody game engine discussion ends up at circlejerking about UE4, which, frankly, doesn't impress me all that much as a consumer.
bitL 11y ago
They had some money issues with free-to-play/gface failure, in addition Microsoft tried to rape them once they sensed they were weak (Rise franchise rights) but in the end they had some mysterious investment that kept them alive. Would be pity to lose them in any case.

magicmu 11y ago

Great idea! It'll really be good for universities to start developing the infrastructure for VR courses, which I would imagine could easily be prohibitively expensive without something like this. Interesting angle by Cryengine as well, it seems like the benefit for them is getting more new game devs to use their platform. I wonder what the story is behind using Bahçeşehir as their flagship school -- Turkey I can see, since there's a big push for technological literacy there right now, but I would think a school like Boğaziçi or Galatasaray would be higher up on the list.

pjmlp 11y ago
Probably related to its founders. Aren't they of Turkish origin?
- patates 11y ago
  The founders are German-born children of a Turkish family who migrated to Germany.
  - magicmu 11y ago
    Ahh there we go. Still an interesting choice of university though, I would imagine some of the more high-profile schools would've been higher up on their list. Who knows what goes into those decisions though.

ogreveins 11y ago

I worked with cryengine for nearly a year before giving up and moving on to UE4 where I already had source code access without being admitted to an incubator. Hopefully something good comes out of this initiative but I'm not holding my breath. When you start learning an engine or any framework the ecosystem and community are instrumental in making your life easier and getting some sort of camaraderie. Just my 2c.

meeper16 11y ago
As for the people investing in VR... https://gfycat.com/SafeWatchfulAmbushbug https://gfycat.com/SafeWatchfulAmbushbug
mentos 11y ago
I've been working with UE4 for 2 years now and its been the 2 most exciting years of my life. The tools are great but the community is even greater. I've never felt more empowered to create. UE4 has won this generation of game engines in my eye, I think crytek should take a step back and re-evaluate everything. Maybe they learn from UE4 and compete with UE5 in a few more years or maybe they boldly fork UE4 and add their value as a 3rd party fork/plugin. I think the sunk costs are too large but I'd love to see Valve fork UE4 and put their engineering might next to Epic's. Would love to hear why this thought of mine is naive/misguided.
- jeswin 11y ago
  >I think the sunk costs are too large but I'd love to see Valve fork UE4 and put their engineering might next to Epic's. Would love to hear why this thought of mine is naive/misguided. UE4 source code isn't open source (to fork), though the code is available to look at. One could reimplement it, but the engineering effort will be monstrous.
  - adventured 11y ago
    You can in fact fork it. You can do almost anything you want to with it, so long as you obey the EULA and pay any royalties owed. https://www.unrealengine.com/faq https://www.unrealengine.com/faq "What modifications can I make to the source code?" "You can extend it, modify it, fork it, or integrate it with other software or libraries, with one exception: You can’t combine the Unreal Engine code with code covered by a “Copyleft” license agreement which would directly or indirectly require the Unreal Engine to be governed by terms other than the EULA."

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

"Lead the way", "define the future" Lot of assumptions given: "Ground floor"

chronial 11y ago

Am I the only one getting a distinctly dystopian (/cyberpunk) vibe from the video on that page? I don't mean the text/content – just the general vibe of the clip.

pointernil 11y ago
Same here. A strange mixture of "Man in the Highcastle" cross "Better of Ted" vibe /scnr
Simp 11y ago
The voice might be computer generated, if it is, it's really well done.

jpeg_hero 11y ago

Maybe this can help with the 2045 initiative? http://youtu.be/01hbkh4hXEk http://youtu.be/01hbkh4hXEk

rboyd 11y ago

The VR labs sound great, but maybe not enough to offer a material advantage. The next stage of the game engine wars will be fought and won over how the developers extend the designer app with VR UI, enabling creating VR (or traditional) games/experiences from within VR. I'm sure they're all already plotting this on the roadmap, even if they're not vocal about the specifics yet.

nickysielicki 11y ago

Is there anyone else here, who has used VR in the form of an HMD, that thinks this is all just a passing fad that will fail miserably? Can I note for a moment that this technology has been hyped since 2012 and we're only seeing the first consumer-facing products now? One of which is nothing other than Google Cardboard (GearVR) and one which is $600? The only real attempt at targeting consumers is coming from Sony, and it costs nearly as much as the console itself does. This is still decidedly a hobbyist market, and it doesn't look like that will change for another year at least. But let's put the price of adoption aside for a moment and assume that at some point it will come down in price. Even then I can't imagine that the average household will be buying this. For one, you wouldn't want to use an HMD in any context other than sitting alone in a room, and that's something that the nerdy hobbyist market doesn't mind, but to the average person it makes it nothing other than a novel toy. I keep hearing people on CNBC talk about how this year the Superbowl will be able to be watched via an HMD, and how this is the future of media. Are they serious? Have they ever heard of a Superbowl party? I watch football around friends, and we enjoy good food and beers. It's a social event first, and a content event second. How does an HMD fit into that? It doesn't. And I think most media we have today (save for video games) are social events. I watched the Breaking Bad finale with friends. I watch scary movies with friends. And that's not to say that I don't sometimes watch things alone, but when content creators have to worry about accommodating both of these experiences, it's difficult to make the VR experience comparatively worthwhile. VR content is going to face the same fate as 3D movies do today. It might be the evolution of video games. But that's a far cry from the hype that it gets. I think that the evolution of Google Glass is what will really take off.

pierre 11y ago
I was doubtfull about VR until I get a gearVR some weeks ago. I now spend ~1 hour a day using it to watch netflix. Some game (drift, lands end) were interesting to play but content is lacking. Bigger TV screen for cheap that follow where you look seems like to be the killer VR feature. I can see it get a wide adoption.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
11y ago