What engine is running BioShock?
It is not certain. Originally BioShock was backed by heavily modified Vengeance engine which was based on Unreal Engine 2.0. However Ken Levine stated that IG switched to Unreal Engine 3.0 because of benefits they have this way, porting all of their own work over. Also the entire lighting system and render were rewritten and water effects were created from scratch. It is uncertain whether BioShock uses Unreal Engine 3.0 itself or just its development tools. Water effects… ? Irrational Games hired water artist and water programmer to work on water effects in BioShock. The result of a year-long work is the most realistic and unique water yet. The reason for this special attention payed to water effects is that IG wants to maintain the feeling that the ocean wants to drown Rapture. Water effects in BioShock feature real-time reflections, refraction, distortion, depth-layered fluid simulation (which simulates turbulence) and surface simulation (water that flows over surfaces in realistic
