S.T.A.L.K.E.R. got awsome graphics?!

When I first started playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. the graphics looked like something that should've been released years ago, and this was with a little bit higher settings than default. When I saw that a reviewer gave the graphics a 10 out of 10, I thought to myself, "what the hell?". This couldn't be the same game, now could it?

I started reading up a bit on the X-Ray engine and looked into the config file of the game, and realized that there's features there that isn't possible to activate from the ingame options. Most notably (although admittely somewhat rudimentary) was Global Illumination which is EXTREMELY high-end stuff.

Combine that with the other lighting effects such as unified lighting, full dynamic lighting, light blooms and parallax mapping and you got the most advanced game graphics engine released to this date. There's much more stuff that adds up aswell, like the weather effects (with wind) and day cycle. I snapped a few screenshots, enjoy!