Gallery: Yes, Your PC Can Generate Graphics This Stunning
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In the ongoing quest for truly realistic videogame graphics, some have taken to [spending thousands of dollars and developing hundreds of mods](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gamelife/2013/03/skyrim-mods/) to achieve more perfect visuals. But you can get a taste of next-gen graphics without going to all that trouble, thanks to [the free-to-download Valley Benchmark tech demo from Unigine Corp](http://unigine.com/products/valley/), available now for PC, Mac and Linux. The demo, based its maker's proprietary game engine, renders a gorgeous, 64 million square meter mountain range that can be explored freely. It's little more than a hiking simulator at the moment, but one that might just leave you shocked by what your machine can handle. Run the app and it kicks off with an automated flyover sequence of the simulated valley, rendering mountains, trees and even grass 10 kilometers away and hundreds of feet below. It looks and feels like a pre-rendered cut scene, but click the "camera mode" button at any point and you're given the ability to literally drop into the world with full freedom of movement. My MacBook Pro Retina was only able to push the game at about 20 fps on "ultra" settings, but Unigine Corp. CEO Denis Shergin says that even weak machines should be able to run Valley Benchmark on low settings and still look impressive. "The Valley runs at 15 FPS even on Macbook Air," Shergin says, "but you can find a rig for less than $1000 to run the benchmark smoothly." Shergin says his company made the demo primarily to attract developers. "We definitely would love to see more open world games based on our engine," he said. For now, Uningine is promoting its product as a tool for running vehicle simulations. In June the company first revealed its next project, a modified, [even bigger version of Valley Benchmark with a built-in helicopter simulator](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VixkiuuFIlA). Read on to see more screens from the Valley Benchmark demo, or [download the demo for your PC, Mac, or Linux machine](http://unigine.com/products/valley/) for free.
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Ten kilometers is already an almost unheard-of draw distance for modern game engines, but newer versions of Unigine can display objects up to 40 km away from players. This comes at a price, of course. Valley Benchmark helpfully displays the current temperature of your GPU while you play, and my MacBook's GPU shot up to nearly 185 degrees Fahrenheit when I cranked up the weather, draw distance and graphics quality in the demo. It's probably a good thing that this is just eye candy, rather than a game with Skyrim levels of addictiveness.
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Shergin touts Valley Benchmark's dynamic weather system, which users of the demo can freely control. Here, light generated by a simulated sun pierces through a thin sheet of rain. Users can tweak wind speed, clouds, rain, or time of day. At the mildest settings, the valley is calm and sunny, but you can generate full-on lightning storms if you want.
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Trees are perhaps Unigine's biggest weak point in its current form. They look stunning from a bird's eye view, but drop down and walk directly up to one and you'll notice blurry textures and blocky shapes. This is in contrast to flowers, rocks and grass, which look more impressive up close. Wind realistically blows shrubbery around, and the illusion of it being real holds strong.
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Switch the demo into automated mode and it takes you on a high-speed flight around the valley, screeching over grasslands and diving from great heights into streams. Throughout all this, there's surprisingly little texture pop-in. When it does appear it's in extreme situations, like when the camera plummets out of the sky and tears through a thick forest. "Switching between levels of details are sometimes visible," Shergin says, "but it's been improved in the UNIGINE-powered helicopter demo already."
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Unigine Corp. used [Siberian landscape](http://gloholiday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/siberia-valley.jpg) as its primary source of inspiration for the design of the valley. Unlike Siberia, the valley here is surprisingly devoid of life. There are obvious technical reasons for that, but Shergin says that plenty of games using Unigine work fine with animated creatures. And, he hints, "there is some hidden life in the mountains."
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Exploring grassy forests at dusk is the most convincing argument in favor of Unigine's flora work. The dynamic lighting system seems to account for not just the trees themselves, but the individual branches as well, even as the wind blows them about. They've arguably outdone [the hordes of modders tweaking Skyrim's greenery](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/gamelife/2013/03/skyrim-mods/#slideid-55127).
