Right before the holidays, we summed up our biggest hits of 2015. Check out the games and features that made the headlines this year!

2015 was a very exciting year for all of us in the CRYENGINE team, to say the least! From the showcase of our first VR demo back in GDC, to the success of our wonderful indie teams integrating SVOGI to their games (and making them look even more realistic), you can be sure that we’ve been working day in and day out to improve CRYENGINE and give you the best visuals and performance.

To celebrate this year’s hits, we prepared this GIF that sums up some of the biggest CRYENGINE games and technology improvements of 2015:

Evolve by Turtle Rock Studios

"In a savage world of man vs. nature, are you the hunter or the hunted? Evolve is a true next generation multiplayer shooter featuring addictive, adrenaline-pumping 4v1 action. One player-controlled monster must evade and outsmart a team of four uniquely skilled playable hunters. Evolve and overpower as the monster or team up and outnumber as the hunters. With endless combinations of hunters, monsters, maps and game modes to choose from, no two hunts will ever be the same. It’s survival of the fittest and any side can win."

Back to Dinosaur Island by Crytek

Back to Dinosaur Island takes advantage of 15 years of CRYENGINE development to show users the sheer endless possibilities that upcoming Virtual Reality devices like the Oculus Rift offer, bringing them face to face with the most terrifying predator that has ever walked the Earth.

New Woodlands level

We replaced our venerable Forest level with the all-new Woodland. Built up from the ground with full support for Physics-Based Rendering, we hope that this new environment will inspire our users in the creation of their own worlds.

OpenGL Support

Starting with 3.8.1, we shipped a fully-featured OpenGL rendering implementation with CRYENGINE, which goes hand in hand with Linux support for your games (see below).

Linux Support

As previously announced, we added Linux support for your Game.exe. While you will still need Windows to use the Sandbox Editor, you can now release your commercial games on Linux as well as on PC- and of course, there are still no royalties whatsoever!

Oculus Rift Support

You asked about it, and we listened: Just in time for the announcement of Crytek’s new VR title “Robinson: The Journey” at this year's E3, we included support for the Oculus Rift HMD (Head-mounted display) into EaaS users’ hands. We've included a small demonstration level, aptly titled the "VR_Demo" level. This showcases some information on how you can approach setting up your levels for VR, some of the implications and the immersive benefits of using VR.

Back to Dinosaur Island 2

A follow-up to 'Back to Dinosaur Island', only this time you don't face a ferocious T-Rex. A crashed spaceship on the horizon indicates you could be the only survivor in a strange planet. As you zip-line your way up a cliff, you discover you are not alone in this beautiful but hostile world.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

"Immerse yourself in a rich, deep adventure from award-winning developer The Chinese Room and investigate the last days of Yaughton Valley. Uncover the traces of the vanished community; discover fragments of events and memories to piece together the mystery of the apocalypse. 
Featuring a beautiful, detailed open-world and a haunting soundtrack, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture is non-linear storytelling at its best."

SVOGI

Sparse Voxel Octree Global Illumination is a system that makes in-game light behave extremely closely to how it does in the real world, adding lifelike immersion. We achieved this by making indirect light bounce off of most objects in the scene. This GI solution is based on voxel ray tracing and provides following effects:

• Dynamic indirect light bounce from static and most of dynamic objects.
• Large scale AO and indirect shadows from static geometry (vegetation, brushes and terrain).
• Works without pre-baking and does not require manual setup of many bounce lights or light volumes.

Robinson: The Journey by Crytek

Go beyond boundaries in Robinson: The Journey, a brand new virtual reality game from Crytek. Harnessing the power of CRYENGINE, Robinson: The Journey will offer players an unparalleled sense of presence in a game world as they assume the role of a young boy who has crash-landed on a mysterious planet. With freedom to explore their surroundings in 360 degrees of detail, players will become pioneers by interacting with the rich ecosystem around them and unearthing incredible secrets at every turn.

The Climb by Crytek

The Climb brings alive the excitement and thrill of rock climbing in incredible virtual reality. Players will scale new heights and explore stunning environments in a new gaming experience developed exclusively for VR, using the power of CRYENGINE.

We’d also like to take this time to thank our users for their continuous support. Your feedback on every release helps us make decisions better tailored for your collective needs. We hope you enjoyed this slightly nostalgic look back at the year that was 2015 for CRYENGINE, and we look forward to an exciting 2016 with all of you.

All the best,

The CRYENGINE team.