how fpsc-games look is your part, mainly not a problem of the engine. it only gives the frames where you have to work in.
engine-probs are screen-resolution (HUDS),polycount, compatibility and ai, my 2 cents (at the moment, i am a total noob).
most other things you can work around with progs outside and creativity, as far as i know cryengine has nearly nothing out-of-the-box, you have to do ALL things by yourself.
how a game looks and gets played is 90% about the artists (fx,coder, cleaners, engeneers, audio-artists etc.) that work on the game, only 10% engine. even with cryengine you need a team of real specialists to get a commercial game done.
look through the showcase/wip and the forums, search for cleanup-methods (hard work) and you can upgrade your game by 200%, even in fpsc (see WOLFs work).
to get a really good and
new trippleA-game its neccessary to rewrite nearly the whole engine... every engine, i am sure for thats the way most aaa-games get made.
main problem of all the fpsc-media is that it has to fit for all of us, so there are many unneccessary animations, bones and much more that consumes performance. when you rewrite every media for its special use in a special place of a specified level of your game(done in all the commeercial games), you can increase performance a lot. finally you have to do a MOD special made for only your game to get a real good one, but that will be more work than one can do when you have a setting of 8hours gameplay and more, so leads to a big team, has to be paid, need money, have to earn money with your game > commercial product, and then you can use any other engine than fpsc, you dont need it for something like this, there is better out there when you are forced to pay thousands/millions for developing.
i think the main problem with that engine is in our minds, so we want an engine that can do a COD/whatever with a few clicks within a month for all the different games made by us. NOT POSSIBLE,people, you have to recognise that these games need 3-5 years engeneering, by 30+ people (PRO-artists), 8-12hours on 5-7 days a week.
have you done this in fpsc? try it, then we can see how far away fpsc is against engines like cry or others. but you cannot complain a game made within a month by one person to a pro-game made in 5 years by 60 people, or better, when you see where the new COD is based on, a game that is developed for 12 years overall now, by 200+ people.
and when you hear of samples like crysis, made by 4 people in the garage: sorry, only the basic elements of the game. there where many freelancers on the project, they simply "forget" to tell that
even with this its great to get something like that "independant" against the ea-games, but as with "blairwitch project" on movies, its the lucky exception in the mass of lost dreams.
and NO, its not possible to finish one level of COD in fpsc-engine within a month. design (and coding etc.) is a
process that needs a lot of time. you dont do one complete-builded level after the other (graphic, gameplay,audio etc.) over 3 years until finished, you dont work in a row. even a trippleAgame looks and plays like sh*t in the first/second year, simply because you will have new ideas and improvements on all workflows with every delevopment-showcase until the product is nearly finished (good example on this is STALKER, 3 months before release nearly unplayable, masses of errors, looks like crap, no sounds etc.)
so fpsc will be the thing that it is today, even in the future: a nice and cheap out-of-the-box-editor for hobby-gamemakers (in 99% of the cases
) for small games to have fun in game-making. and within these limits i think its a real good one
screen-resolution (HUDS)
better polycount/performance on npcs/shaders
compatibility
more script-commands (=ai and more)
revised fog/water-options
for 1.19, thats what i want to see over the next years. everything else is on us.
