DX10: Far Cry 2

Ubisoft has developed Far Cry 2 as a sequel to the original, but with a very different approach to game play and story line. Far Cry 2 features a vast world built on Ubisoft's new game engine called Dunia, meaning "world", "earth" or "living" in Farci. The setting in Far Cry 2 takes place on a fictional Central African landscape, set to a modern day timeline.

The Dunia engine was built specifically for Far Cry 2, by Ubisoft Montreal development team. It delivers realistic semi-destructible environments, special effects such as dynamic fire propagation and storms, real-time night-and-day sun light and moon light cycles, dynamic music system, and non-scripted enemy A.I actions.

The Dunia game engine takes advantage of multi-core processors as well as multiple processors and supports DirectX 9 as well as DirectX-10. Only 2 or 3 percent of the original CryEngine code is re-used, according to Michiel Verheijdt, Senior Product Manager for Ubisoft Netherlands. Additionally, the engine is less hardware-demanding than CryEngine 2, the engine used in Crysis.

However, it should be noted that Crysis delivers greater character and object texture detail, as well as more destructible elements within the environment. For example; trees breaking into many smaller pieces and buildings breaking down to their component panels. Far Cry 2 also supports the amBX technology from Philips. With the proper hardware, this adds effects like vibrations, ambient colored lights, and fans that generate wind effects.

There is a benchmark tool in the PC version of Far Cry 2, which offers an excellent array of settings for performance testing. Benchmark Reviews used the maximum settings allowed for DirectX-10 tests, with the resolution set to 1920x1200. Performance settings were all set to 'Very High', Render Quality was set to 'Ultra High' overall quality, 8x anti-aliasing was applied, and HDR and Bloom were enabled.

• Far Cry 2 v1.02
  • Extreme Settings: (Very High Performance, Ultra-High Quality, 8x AA, HDR + Bloom)

Far Cry 2 Extreme Quality Settings

Although the Dunia engine in Far Cry 2 is slightly less demanding than CryEngine 2 engine in Crysis, the strain appears to be extremely close. In Crysis we didn't dare to test AA above 4x, whereas we used 8x AA and 'Ultra High' settings in Far Cry 2. The end effect was a separation between what is capable of maximum settings, and what is not. Using the short 'Ranch Small' time demo (which yields the lowest FPS of the three tests available), we noticed that there are very few products capable of producing playable frame rates with the settings all turned up.

Cost Analysis: Far Cry 2 (1680x1050)

Test Summary: Far Cry 2 benchmark tests use maximum settings, which means that users who dial down the anti-aliasing or use a lower resolution will have much better frame rate performance. The FC2 Dunia game engine demonstrates a preference towards NVIDIA products over ATI, which allows the pair of GeForce GTS 450's in SLI to produce a dominating 21.4 FPS performance lead over the Radeon HD 5870 while still maintaining a lead over the more expensive GTX 470. Because of the major differences in performance with Far Cry 2, the GeForce GTS 450 SLI set (and all other GeForce cards) offered the best performance and cost per FPS of any DX11 video card. Far Cry 2 rendered 43.3 FPS with a single GeForce GTS 450, which scales to 82.0 FPS with 95% SLI efficiency.

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