I don't have an XBone and I don't really follow new video games too closely. I'm too busy trying to finish my own game. I came across this video on the Unreal Engine forums regarding someone who is making a pirate game in UDK.
I think all of that is pretty doable in any of the major popular game engines (besides maybe RPG Maker). I didn't think there was anything remarkable about it except for the water. But that water is remarkable. No doubt about it.
Take a look at around 6:40. Now, I haven't made the jump to UE4 yet (which Sea of Thieves uses), so I don't know the current best practices of Unreal water effects. So all I can do is be dumbfounded at how good that water looks and just guess at how it must be done based on my familiarity with previous-generation engines.
It looks to me like the waves are mesh displacement (as opposed to material/shader voodoo), following some sort of z=f(x,y,t) function. The material changes to whitecaps when the dz/dx and dz/dy are above a certain threshold, and it spawns a spray particle effect. There is subsurface scattering making the water glow bluish-green inside the waves between the camera and the sun. Then you have all of the traditional effects you would expect on water: specularity (overpowering bright light reflection from light sources, such as the sun), reflection (changing the diffuse/albedo, i.e., color of the surface to reflect the scene around the water), depth-based opacity and tint.
And the waves change intensity. I haven't watched thoroughly enough yet to see whether the waves are always stronger in the open water, or if the waves change everywhere via some kind of variable, or (since the game is multiplayer, you would have to account for this) if the waves change according to local weather conditions and can be different in different parts of the map at the same time.
I also haven't picked apart the video to see if we can see waves breaking on the shore, or if the wake behind a ship is different from the water to the front and sides.
And that's just the look of the water. The water also seems to have a direct effect on the tilt of the ships. (And it wouldn't be too hard to push the ship or swimmers in the direction of the waves.)
I am still just amazed at the quality of that water. I'll bet that a big game studios with multimillion dollar budgets hires physicists and mathematicians just to do stuff like this, which they hand off to the artists. I'll bet that water cost more than the entire budgets of many smaller games.
TL;DR: O.O Dat water.
I think all of that is pretty doable in any of the major popular game engines (besides maybe RPG Maker). I didn't think there was anything remarkable about it except for the water. But that water is remarkable. No doubt about it.
Take a look at around 6:40. Now, I haven't made the jump to UE4 yet (which Sea of Thieves uses), so I don't know the current best practices of Unreal water effects. So all I can do is be dumbfounded at how good that water looks and just guess at how it must be done based on my familiarity with previous-generation engines.
It looks to me like the waves are mesh displacement (as opposed to material/shader voodoo), following some sort of z=f(x,y,t) function. The material changes to whitecaps when the dz/dx and dz/dy are above a certain threshold, and it spawns a spray particle effect. There is subsurface scattering making the water glow bluish-green inside the waves between the camera and the sun. Then you have all of the traditional effects you would expect on water: specularity (overpowering bright light reflection from light sources, such as the sun), reflection (changing the diffuse/albedo, i.e., color of the surface to reflect the scene around the water), depth-based opacity and tint.
And the waves change intensity. I haven't watched thoroughly enough yet to see whether the waves are always stronger in the open water, or if the waves change everywhere via some kind of variable, or (since the game is multiplayer, you would have to account for this) if the waves change according to local weather conditions and can be different in different parts of the map at the same time.
I also haven't picked apart the video to see if we can see waves breaking on the shore, or if the wake behind a ship is different from the water to the front and sides.
And that's just the look of the water. The water also seems to have a direct effect on the tilt of the ships. (And it wouldn't be too hard to push the ship or swimmers in the direction of the waves.)
I am still just amazed at the quality of that water. I'll bet that a big game studios with multimillion dollar budgets hires physicists and mathematicians just to do stuff like this, which they hand off to the artists. I'll bet that water cost more than the entire budgets of many smaller games.
TL;DR: O.O Dat water.
