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From Doom To Dunia — the History of 3D Engines
notthatwillsmith writes "It's difficult to think of a single category of application that's driven the pace of desktop hardware development further and faster than first-person shooters. Maximum PC examined the evolution of FPS engines, looking back at the key technologies that brought games from the early sprite-based days of Doom to the fully 3D-rendered African Savannah as rendered by Far Cry 2's Dunia engine. It's truly amazing how far the state of the art has moved in the last 16 years."
To avoid having the reader click through the quite annoying normal article split across a million pages.
Title of Article: Doom to Dunia: A Visual History of 3D Game Engines
FTA: "Now, we know what you're thinking, and we're well aware that game engines existed prior to Doom's release in 1993; we're even going to cover some. But it was id Software's now legendary first-person shooter that pushed reusable 3D game engines as a viable programming model, and videogame development has never been the same since then."
Does it need an explanation?
They list an engine called Voxel, which isn't an engine but a technology. And they list a bunch of games which use the same engine as NovaLogic's Comanche, but it's complete bullshit. Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 (for example) didn't use that engine at all, the just used the voxel technology.
Then they list StoneKeep, but StoneKeep didn't even use a 3D engine.
They call Outcast "A popular voxel engine", the engine was used only once. And showed it severe limitations. How can something used only once be popular.
And for some reason they decided to split up some engines into multiple generations (like UnrealEngine) and keep others as a single entry (like LithTech, GameBryo)
And for an history article they surely didn't bother to put everything in chronological order. And for a visual article they sure didn't bother to find the best screenshots to show of the engine.