Crytek representatives have announced that their middleware engine, CryENGINE 2, will be present at the Game Developer's Conference 2007 event to sport a hands-on demonstration to the public for the first time. You may remember Crytek as the developers behind Far Cry and Crysis (which uses CryENGINE 2).

The demonstration will highlight the features and capabilities of the engine, in order to market the engine technology for use in their games. If CryENGINE 2 succeeds, it will face off against other middleware engines, including the popular Unreal 3 engine.

Some features, such as the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) feature of the Sandbox2 Terrain and Visual Mission editor, will be shown for the first time in full interactive glory.

Settings such as time of day can be adjusted, and character animation editing and motion-captured (phoneme driven) facial animation editors can be accessed straight from the engine editor itself.

Crysis, having been demonstrated in last year's GDC, has been eyed for the photorealistic environments it sports in the game. Up to today, the graphics capabilities and technology of CryENGINE 2 has yet to be tapped by the public and by developers.

Booth 848 at the 2007 GDC will be holding the demonstration of the engine, starting from March 5 through to 9 in San Francisco.