Personally, I like the pretty pictures and as a (regular) software engineer, game engines are so far from my expertise that it's like reading about black magic.

Personally, I like the pretty pictures and as a (regular) software engineer, game engines are so far from my expertise that it's like reading about black magic. I'm completely in awe at the complexity, and multiple passes behind a simple game frame, which are rendered in under 16ms. Video games are the best showcase of the ludicrous speed and potential of modern computing, while we're complaining because our text editors are sluggish to render a few glyphs :-)