Incidently, this is apparently how rift have done it... (posted there by RIFT staff) " Gamebryo + Trion Magic Rift uses a custom engine, derived from Gamebryo. We began development with Gamebryo, which provided an awesome head-start, and we were able to get up and running quickly. Over time we customized or replaced most of the major pieces, providing our own solutions for lighting, animation, shaders, model streaming, and other components. We have talented in-house staff that develops our custom engine, so we control our own rendering destiny instead of waiting for someone else to provide features or support. As was stated elsewhere, the Rift engine uses DX9 for best compatibility, with great visuals. It's a deferred renderering architecture, which allows for some cool effects, and makes it cheaper to render scenes with large numbers of point lights like you see in the video trailers. Night time looks especially awesome in Rift, with every fire, lamp, and spell casting a flickering glow on the world around it. Nothing is pre-baked: all of the lighting is dynamic, which of course is necessary for a game based around dynamic content. Although I'm a Trion gear-head, my hat's off to the team's art staff, who have created some truly amazing stuff. At the end of the day, no amount of whiz-bang rendering technology will turn a dull, flat environment into a compelling one. Look at Gloamwood, or Darkening Deeps, or Silverwood. Look at the quality of the character models, the NPCs, and the animations. The art team has created some incredible content while working within the box the programmers have provided. They've developed custom shaders for everything from horse hair to tree bark. Go read through the developer intro thread again to see some of the artists who have helped created one stunning-looking game." Link: http://forums.riftgame.com/rift-general-discussions/general-discussion/420-game-using-cryengine-2.html#post74120