I would be willing to drop upwards of $100 for a fully realized and enhance version of UNREAL on the U3 engine.

I'll give a free GOG game to someone who makes Dwarf Fortress using the Unreal 3 engine.
Hell, I'll throw in another if you do Nethack too!

2012 is Unreal Engine 4
Given that i see why there is a push to open up U3. If you can get devs, Professional and indie the tools needed to create games that look current gen. Then this will become a standard cementing the need, nay the near requirement to use UE4 when it drops in 2012.
Our eyes and minds will be so used to seeing UE3 quality that it necessitates a requirement to upgrade to leading nex-gen tech.
Its an amazing smart marketing tactic.
If you look at the screenshot i posted, this is the highest resolution graphics you can import into Oblivion, meshes, textures, skybox, lighting, draw distance, speed tree rendering till end of scene, physics on every blade of grass, and shadows by tree canopy and grass blades. This is the most a 32bit system can handle.
That looks so ugly to my eyes know since Ive seen better renders out there. And my guess is you have as well. When this is the cream of the crop when Oblivion was big. Cry Engine 3 is also posted, which has yet to use or implement DirectX 11. it looks realistic, when the prior shot was considered realistic when it came out.
This is where were heading. And im very excited to be a PC gamer now!
CryEngine 3 Demo Box Screens.... SO IMPRESSIVE!

Already have it installed, though I'll still have to learn how to actually USE it-and, furthermore, if it will be able to do what I want regarding animation (I want something there that doesn't look canned and won't have unrealistic instances of objects clipping through walls or the like), vast environments, and perhaps lots of AI going on at the same time. I have a feeling that many of my game concepts won't be realized without coding a specially-made engine, which would most certainly be a pain in the ass.
As for UE4 not being in development yet, and being targeted for next-gen consoles first...well, it's certainly not like the good old days any more.
I remember that first UE3 demonstration running on a GeForce 6800 Ultra so many years ago. They touted Shader Model 3.0 and what it could do, all while showing off art assets that looked...decidedly unlike anything else they had produced (and later turned out to be for Gears of War).
Of course, nowadays you wouldn't even think of running a UE3 game on a 6800 Ultra beyond bare minimum settings if you want any semblance of smooth framerates...

I use a 6800 Ultra still and I was running Bioshock on all high settings. Unreal Tournament 3 I can run at medium without any problems on the larger maps with lots of bots. I do run 1024x768 resolution but thats more to do with the fact I still have a crt monitor that doesn't go any higher.

What framerates do you get?
That's the thing about me-I'm very framerate-sensitive. 60 FPS constant preferred, and minimum should never, EVER dip below 30 FPS.
I'd try Bioshock on the Athlon XP 3200+/1.5 GB DDR-333 (need to replace that with 2 GB of DDR-400)/6800 Ultra classic gaming build I just completed, but I don't have a spare DVD drive to install it with. As for UT3...well, I found performance lackluster at my university's PC lab full of Athlon 64 X2 4400+/2 GB RAM (don't know if it's DDR or DDR2)/7900 GT systems unless the resolution was notched down to 800x600. That's definitely a game where I want no less than 60 FPS at all times (very fast-paced), whereas I wouldn't mind 30 FPS on Bioshock.
As for gaming on 1024x768...nothing wrong with that! Up until 2007, I had to use some crappy 15" LCD with that resolution, and then when I built my flagship system at the end of that year, I used an old 19" shadow mask CRT I had since 1999/2000, which limited me to 1280x1024 at 75 Hz, or 1024x768 at 85 Hz. (Of course, now that I have this lovely 21" Trinitron/aperture grille CRT, I generally run 1600x1200 at 96 Hz if my system can take it, notching it down to 1280x1024 or even 1024x768 in extreme cases.)

Bollocks to that, UE3 Pong or nothing!

This close enough for ya?

60 fps? human eye can see only 24 frames per second. anything above that is unimportant really.

Well I can sure tell the difference between 25fps and 29.97

I love UE3, but this is beyond what I've could have imagined EPIC to do.

I never checked the actually framerate but I never had any slow down and it was as smooth as if I was playing UT2k4 on the thing. UT3 was just as good in the indoor smaller maps. It wasn't quite as smooth on the outdoor large maps but it was more then playable on medium. My Ram is ddr2-800 though and The 6800 Ultra is made by BFG and overclocked by them.
I mostly mentioned it because running on high settings with a lower resolution will give me better frames then if I was running on high settings with say 1650x1080.
That 24 frames per second thing is a myth. Check this site out for to see why.
[url=]http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm[/url]

Whoa. I never knew about this! Neat.

Twenty-four frames per second is usually what animated films run at. It is deemed to be a good speed for realistic motion etc...
Complete myth that is my friend.