9. Improved 3D Match Engine
Regardless of the annual updates to the match engine, there was always a long way to go for SI Games before they came anywhere close to football games like FIFA in terms of the visual quality of their match engine. But the strides made this year are a lot more noticable, and have a greater impact than in previous years. After two years of hard work, the match engine team have introduced a whole new physics engine which governs how the ball moves, bringing more authenticity, and more responses to different surface types. Both players and the ball will respond more naturally - players to the ball, and the ball to external factors like wind resistance, which will make managers alter their tactics to take match day conditions into account, rather than expecting the same thing that works on a sunny day to work when it's snowing. Players will also look more realistic, with work done on body scaling, and crucially,the match engine team have worked on the match AI to make it even more realistic than it has been. Cameras have also seen an update, with players able to zoom in and out of play on almost every camera, and player animations have been rebuilt and supplemented with new additions to make this the best looking match engine yet released as part of Football Manager. http://youtu.be/GaPcae2MWJU