The Crysis Report, Part III

Continued from Part II

Part of the appeal and buzz sorrounding Crysis is that those who have witnessed the game in action have claimed it's the most graphically incredible game ever seen. It undoubtadly surpasses anything on the PC today and most likely will shit on the limited capabilities of "Next-Gen" consoles (as PC games usually do anyway). One of the main selling points for any game today is graphics and those of Cry Engine 2 (which Crysis is built on) will water your eyeballs. some of the features include:

Volumetric clouds which are illuminated in real-time and allow soft fly-throughs. This allows for frantic action when you are fighting aliens in the sky. The clouds also cast realistic shadows on anything lying beneath them.
Real-time Ambient Maps lighting technology is a real-time implementation of indirect lighting that approximates ambient light intensity. This technology provides realistic ambient lighting. Using this technology Crysis will feature the most realistic lighting without compromising the real-time performance.
A leak and bleeding free implementation of Depth of Field is shown to support focus changes. Crysis will feature this technology as part of their cinematic gameplay experience.
The camera, as well as any object on screen, if moved too quickly features directional high quality Motion Blur. This feature provides a cinematic visual quality supporting what Crytek calls "Video Realism".
All objects cast shadows that are pixel accurate and soft according to the sunlight diffusion; allowing for an unparalleled shadow rendering technology.

It's unsurprising that this is a PC only title. What Crytek has done with CryEngine 2 can only be pulled off with the next-gen technology for the PC and those with high-end machines when the game releases are in for a treat. It should also be noted that it's planned to take full advantage of Windows Vista and DirectX10, although it will run with much lesser options on XP and DirectX9. Any delays with Vista will also delay this game as already announced by Electronic Arts.

Sources: 3D Gamers, IGN & Gamespy