Karl04 said:
i mean, what has it come to? we need two 7800gtx to run fear with smooth frame rates now?
Well, assuming we're not dealing with generally inefficient coding which I don't think is the case with either engine, A game's performance is something determined by the the game developer's decisions about where technology will be once the product is released. These decisions are often made years in advanced and as is the case with FEAR, aren't always spot on.
I think FEAR has an efficient engine, they were just expecting video cards to have a lot more pixel & vertex shader muscle than they did upon release. As I eluded to before I believe the next generation of top end cards from ATi and Nvidia will handle games like FEAR far better than current models. Just like we saw Halo PC performance double when going from 5900/9800 to X800/6800 (Halo PC's performance was shader limited).
Valve's focus on texture detail and overall artistic quality in HL2 over the expensive global lighting, heavy use of normal maps, and full screen shader effects in FEAR meant that on release it was a bit behind the times, but scaled far better. Of course, one can always turn up resolution, AA & AF to increase IQ. I think HL2 still looks amazing today if you feed a fast video card and CPU along with the proper settings. It would be nice if the geometry detail was a bit higher though.
I replayed HL2 several weeks back when I still had my 7800GT and was amazed at how much fun I had with it. If its been a while since you've played through the single player campaign I recommend you do so. After playing through that game most every other game world just feels sterile. I don't think anybody has used physics before or since to intelligently increase a game's fun or immersion factor as well as Valve did back in 2004. When you consider that most other games are still only using physics to knock paint cans and the like off of shelves when you bump into them it's even more impressive.
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