The Butterfly Effect project was an eye-opening experience and took Unity to places it’s never been before. Many of the improvements that surfaced are planned for further development and will roll into the product throughout the 4.x cycle and beyond. The first of these implementations is DirectX 11 support and the improved post-processing effects you’ll find in Unity 4.0.
Check it out here: The Making of The Butterfly Effect - Powered by Unity
Excellent work from all concerned. I guess the 5 gig webplayer version is still a ways off though lol 
When I talk to friends in the game industry biz (artists) they all claim unity simply does not match unreal 4 demo. To address this I would suggest a series of webplayers which demonstrate key features separately:
As the reason unreal 4 blows unity away visually is because they throw so much damn money into these demos it’s not even funny. But in isolation, perhaps unity can kill two birds with one stone: being the first to have online dx11 demos, and the first to isolate these simple elements which are so exciting to so many.
Regardless, keep it up unity, it is appreciated by many.
It does look good, funny and cartoonie the main character falls bang into the uncanny valley in my opinion (which is trite as that’s what he does in the short).
But it’s not a very action packed must have game intro, e.g. Warcraft/Halo/Unreal!
Would you play a game about this Mr Bean like character?
Its an impressive demo, as hippo says it would be great to see these individual strengths being covered, regardless of Unreal 4’s demos they did a good features walkthrough that explained a lot of really impressive stuff well - I’m sure Unity can do much the same things but it would be good to see them discussed explicitly
Great demo though and lots of great impressive technology on show, i watched it in the unite videos and it does have some showstoppers, the pyroclastic explosion at the end is much mentioned it seems
Its also nice to see a demo that isnt a bunch of freaking space marines, it’s like technology devs are finally growing up
This isn’t a game. It’s a short film rendered in real time. I think you are too caught up in your “why Unity no AAA?” mindset atm 
Make Advert Fate into a directx 11 fabulosa… NOW!
You see, it is perfect you can do real time reflections in all the gold stuff and particles everywhere especially the guns then just have this mystical girl hologram(Hair) that guides you through the map… there is an airstrike at the end of it IIRC on the massive bot so that can be an massive fireworks show(Explosions(Particles))
And tesselate the kagibees out of it.
I’m glad Unity tried something “different”
Professional developers don’t need a Michael Bay type game demo to see what’s new and interesting in an engine. Gamers do, but devs don’t. It could be an interactive whack-a-mole that the purpose would be the same : show tool features, not game concepts.
All those FPS / RPG style demos in other engines are made to gather some kids in front of a big screen during a convention and say “woooooooow look at that warrior/knight/gun/rifle/alien ! It’s so cooooooooool” in order to make some noise on gaming sites. But the dev next to them will say “yeah, the modelers artists of this demo are talented. But where are the engine features ?”
In the end, it’s a game engine, gamers are not the audience, devs are.
How gamers think:
Unity = Bad graphics.
UDK = Good graphics.
CE3 = Best graphics.
They think of this when they are going to play a game, its not a big problem but still… and usually the tech demos push the engine to its absolute limits none of Unitys have.
I understand the logic. But still, if a gamer judges a game visual quality by its engine, it means that from the start the game artists didn’t really overdo themselves So the blame is to put on them, not the engine
(I mean look at Oliver Spike : Dimension Jumpers, great example of quality)
You and I know that… TBH so should gamers but no they call it on the engine not the artists example : slender, not to be rude but its graphics suck and every one is like “he should have made it in UDK or CryEngine” when really these would just have some nicer shaders.
How do I put this , while I respect Unity for what it is . IF this is the best Unity 4 can do, you’ve really highlighted its limitations . I guess with 15 million and a team full of the best artist on earth , someone COULD make a game that really pushes DX11…
Can you elaborate a bit on how we’ve highlighted Unity’s limitations here?
Where are these budget figures coming from to make a game with great graphics in Unity with DX11?
It’s a showcase for what Unity can do . I love Unity, this SDK has literally motivated me to learn programming , but in my head I’m comparing it to this
Like the only part I really saw an out standing amount of detail was the fish tank ( the scales look nice) .
And thats my noob estimate given most AAA games are costing that amount now in days . I guess if you have REALLY motivated artists you could pull off a game that pushing the limits of not only Unity , but DX11 as well , for a million but thats low balling it .
So…Realtime GI. Deffered Lit Particle, and Full APEX integration isn’t?
Hi,
I believe that unity made a nice demo.
I wish to see more, as downloadable projects.
Implementations of the technologies described in the blog post that can run in unity 4 have a great potential.
Jaw - dropping impressions of “x” company demo cannot pay the rent.
Hippocoder, Hold on, Im working on a GPU particles webplayer I don’t think there were GPU particles in the butterfly demo?
But unity just is behind unreal engine graphics wise.Unreal just spends more resources on that area than unity can. Im more excited for the ‘learn unity’ videos. Those will show off unitys real power - simplicity, usability and workflow.
I think that was a very nice demo by Unity much more technically sophisticated than the Unreal demo video in this thread. The Mr Bean angle was alot more interesting that the typical angle chosen to do these demos. I think Unreal gets more credit than it deserves because the atmosphere is so dark, hiding it’s flaws.
Of course Unity can’t actually do what was demonstrated in the video but I read in another thread that shapekeys are coming. I’m not sure though about the man’s hair and slippers as it seemed to be implied that that was an nVidia dependent process.
While the Unreal 4 demo is indeed impressive I think the tech involved in each demo is more on par than most people realize. I think it actually boils down to the art style for some people. If you like heavy metal with demons and lava then the Unreal demo is going to seem more appealing… if on the other hand you’re tired of 80s album cover cliches dominating the forefront of AAA game styles then this demo might appeal to you more.
Sorry, couldn’t resist
Epic is awesome and they have honed a style over the years that perfectly compliments what their engine can do. So much so that the “Unreal look” is almost synonymous with AAA in some people’s minds. For this demo we could’ve tried to compete with that look, but we wanted to do something a little different and we hope that most people can appreciate that.
The Butterfly Effect is just amazing, very good job guys.
I agree with everything you are saying. Really the only thing that really stands out to me technically in Unreals demo, is the real time ambient lighting that reflects off surfaces. Everything else is just great art and use of fancy shaders(which both engines have). Can Unity 4 do this completely in real time? If not, is this going to happen any time soon?