Switching to yet another demo, we watched as SM3'd boulders bounced down a mountain. Nothing much impressive there you might think, but back in Unreal Tournament 3 days, the engine could manage maybe 10-15 boulders realistically. UT2k4 could manage perhaps 25-30… Unreal Engine 3 can handle more than 600 with ease... and slap in a PhysX card and Mark reckons that could easily be as many as 6000... all rendered, all lit in real time with real time shadows, perhaps a touch of moving volumetric dust being swirled around by the boulders and they thunder by the possibilities are nearly endless.

Finally, we asked Mark his thoughts on the current gen GFX cards and what gamers would need to get the best from their games. Interestingly, Mark is a firm believer in playing a game the way a developer intended it to be played, with as many of the graphical options tuned on as possible. Mark feels that the competition gamers who knock all the detail setting off while playing on a 7800GT SLI rig are essentially cheating. His argument is that if a developer has made a game where textures or leaves work against a player spotting another, that's just part of the game. Knocking down detail levels to make opposing players stand out more is just a form of cheating.