It’s robust enough to stay looking pretty while there’s 2,000 on a server with 200 on the screen, which you ”just can’t do” with other MMOs and achieve 60 FPS. The engine can scale easily.
According to the numbers, less than 10% of PlanetSide 2’s user base can run the game at full. SOE isn’t concerned they’ll narrow their audience.
”Every internal product that we make from here on out will use ForgeLight,” declared senior art director Tramell Isaac.
”We can put 2000 people on a server, and we can have all those guys running at 60fps. We can have upwards of 200 on screen at one time. You can’t do that with any other MMO, period. You just can’t do that. Then on top of that, you can do it with visual fidelity that’s comparable with any other first person shooter out there.”
As the collective studios of SOE will all use the same engine they ”can easily pump out new MMOs in the future.”
It doesn’t have to be putting out the greatest visuals. ”The engine can be dialed down back to wherever we want to put it,” he said. ”Every other game that’s made doesn’t need the visual fidelity that PlanetSide 2 does. It can be anywhere from the visual fidelity of WOW… but that’s the choice of the development team. It can be dialed back any way we want to.”
It’s good news for PlayStation 4 as SOE can now more easily create multi-platform MMOs like FreeRealms and DC Universe Online. Hopefully there could be some serious cross-platform play as well in the future.