hmm unreal engine still used light mapping though its the automatic kind.
Unreal Engine requires meshes to be uniquely textured to be lightmapped. I know because I saw some internal design guidelines before the engine was even released. So they are really just requiring the texture to be unwrapped on the first UV channel.
How the heck can you claim, that you perform occlusion culling on the GPU?
Quite easily. The engine performs occlusion on a per-pixel level. :)
I think, today its a common technology for larger projects, to modify the world by a script and even allow users to do the same.
Obviously we don't want someone adding a few commands and selling our engine as their own. Early on, someone wanted to do this and sell our engine plus a few commands as their own engine. A scripted product is possible but requires a special license.
He had some old products which are less mature and we have to be forced to upgrade with prety steep price which is like to buy an all new copy.
Leadwerks Engine 2 is a free upgrade for LE1 users. The only upgrade I have ever charged for was CShop -> 3D World Studio.