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Zorro

(15,745 posts) Wed May 13, 2020, 03:05 PM May 2020

Unreal Engine 5′s demo is the next-gen graphics showcase you've been waiting for

"Lumen in the Land of Nanite" is the name of the Unreal Engine 5 demo revealed by Epic Games. (Epic Games)

Epic Games and its CEO Tim Sweeney, who created the Unreal Engine back in 1995, revealed new details about Unreal Engine 5 on Wednesday, including a gameplay demo running on PlayStation 5 hardware — the public’s first look at anything running on an actual PlayStation 5. The unveiling of the next iteration of Unreal Engine, prior versions of which power several massive games, films and TV shows, is the public’s first solid look at next-generation graphics. It makes a convincing case that there are still astonishing graphical leaps to be made — despite talk about the diminishing returns of video game graphics.

The demo game, “Lumen in the Land of Nanite,” isn’t a real game intended for commercial release, but Epic executives tell The Post that the “Tomb Raider”-like third-person adventure game is playable. The demo is named after the two technology solutions being introduced in Unreal 5. Lumen is a new dynamic lighting system, while Nanite allows for greater geometric detail. This means a single statue can be rendered with 33 million triangles, and a room full of dozens of the same statue will feature 16 billion triangles of images.

Epic has been iterating on the Unreal Engine to help developers save time and work. Rather than build and program individual polygons and reshaping environments after small changes, developers should be able to slide in high-quality textures or photogrammetry scans to mimic real-world imagery. It’s right in line with Unreal Engine’s current use in Hollywood studios, most notably Disney’s streaming hit, “The Mandalorian.” Sweeney also said that, like previous versions of Unreal, the new engine could also benefit smaller development teams and studios, as it can more efficiently and affordably produce top-tier graphics than if they try to produce their own engines.

In Unreal Engine 5, a single statue can be rendered with 33 million triangles, and a room full of dozens of the same statue will feature 16 billion triangles of images. (Epic Games)

“The biggest limiting factor [in the games business today] isn’t technology or hardware performance,” Sweeney said. “It’s development time and budget. These are really hugely constraining and prevent smaller teams from competing with bigger studios. The other big effort we’re making with these technologies is to greatly improve the productivity in building high quality scenes and being able to build game experiences that looks as good as movies.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/05/13/unreal-engine-5s-demo-is-next-gen-graphics-showcase-youve-been-waiting/