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CryEngine is a game engine used for the first-person shooter Far Cry. It was originally developed by Crytek as a technology demo for Nvidia and, when the company saw its potential, it was turned into a game.

When video cards with support for 3.0 pixel and vertex shaders were released, Crytek released version 1.2 of the engine which used some of the capabilities for better graphics. It also uses Polybump, a special way of rendering texture to make them appear bumpy. Unlike Bumpmapping this uses actual polygons instead of layers of texture; this led to games like Far Cry being very performance demanding.

Later the company developed CryEngine version 1.3, which added support for HDR lighting.

The engine has been licensed to NCsoft for their MMORPG, Aion: Tower of Eternity.

On March 30, 2006, Ubisoft acquired all rights to the CryEngine, and the engine now has no legal ties to Crytek.

[edit] CryEngine 2

CryEngine 2 is a game engine. It is an extended version of the CryEngine, the game engine behind Far Cry. CryEngine 2 is currently being used for Crytek's game, Crysis, an updated version is used in Crysis Warhead, an expansion of Crysis, and a deal has been signed for the Swedish Developer Mindark for use in their MMORPG, Entropia Universe. In March of 2009 at the Game Developers Conference the CryEngine 2's successor (CryEngine 3) was shown on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

CryEngine 2 was first licensed out to French company IMAGTP who specializes in architectural and urban-planning communication. The purpose of licensing the engine was to create a program to allow clients to see exactly what a building or other structure would look like before any actual construction was undertaken.

As of March 7, Simpson Studios, a new development studio, has licensed the CryEngine2 out to use on a Massively Multiplayer Virtual World (MMVW) that takes place on a terraformed Mars.

On May 11, 2007 Crytek announced that they would be using the engine to create a game based on their new intellectual property. It is also confirmed that it will not be a part of Crysis and in fact may not even be a first person shooter.

On September 17, 2007, Ringling College of Art & Design became the first higher education institution in the world to license CryEngine 2 for educational purposes.

[edit] CryEngine 3

CryEngine 3 is a game engine currently in development by Crytek.

On March 11, 2009, Crytek announced that it would introduce CryEngine 3 at the 2009 Game Developers Conference, held from March 25 to March 27. The new engine is being developed for use on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and according to Crytek will scale better than the CryEngine 2. A video demo was released on March 28.