Unreal Engine 3 adds DX 11 tessellation, PhysX, Apex, 3D Vision support

Epic's PC support has waned in recent years; the company, along with Microsoft, first skipped Gears of War 2, before releasing the troubled Bulletstorm. Alongside consoles, they're giving the platform more juice, however-- the Unreal Engine 3 has just added support for PC-exclusive DirectX 11 tessellation in addition to three multiplatform NVIDIA technologies: PhysX, 3D Vision, and Apex.

Epic's UE3 trailer from November 2010, showing off some new features.

Tessellation offers more realistically rendered objects with better performance -- you can see it in action in our feature here. PhysX of course refers to in-game physics -- the way water reacts when you run through it, for one example; 3D Vision refers to the ongoing 3D gaming trend which delivers maximum immersion (if done properly), and can mostly recently be seen in Bulletstorm; Apex is lesser-known but can be terribly important -- it offers easier scaling on the developer end so gamers on a wide range of hardware and platforms can enjoy a given title.
In short, what this means for gamers is better and more realistic looking games that use the engine, which these days, is quite a lot.