UNREAL ENGINE 5
Epic Games demos Unreal Engine 5 in real time on PlayStation 5. Take your first look at the next gen in action
The engine that’ll fuel the next generation’s games, shown first running on PS5.
She walks firmly into a craggy canyon and the camera pans around and zooms in on the rocks to our left, which look tangibly real. Though she’s performing the moves of a familiar tomb-raiding icon, scurrying and clambering about the photoreal world, this is no game. This is Epic Games showcasing Unreal Engine 5, the new toolset almost every developer will tap into in the next generation, and it’s running in real time on PlayStation 5. This is a tease of what Sony’s next gen can achieve.
“EVERY DEVELOPER OF ANY SIZE CAN GET THESE RESULTS.”
One of Epic Games’ goals is to deliver the kind of photorealism we’ve become accustomed to in film CG and VFX. The broader aim is to ensure every developer of any size can get these results.
We’re back in the demo running on PS5, called Lumen In The Land Of Nanite, and we see our heroine pull herself up a sandy ledge, dust herself down, and the fine flecks sprinkle into the wind, light dancing off them as they disperse. The camera pans up, and above looms an ornate temple dappled by sunlight that realistically picks out spots of metal glinting from the ancient rocky forms.
The world looks real and tangible thanks to new tech Epic Games calls “Nanite virtualised micropolygon geometry”. This new next-gen feature enables videogame artists to create as much geometric detail in a scene as the eye can see; this means film-quality models and art that would normally be optimised and reduced in detail to work in a game can simply be imported and run – that’s art made of billions of polygons imported into UnrealEngine-5-powered games on PS5.
It means devs no longer need to count polygons to fit their games’ memory or draw budgets; the need to manually manage detail to get everything to work is gone. The ‘one wheel in our new game has more polygons than an entire car in our last game’ bragging of developers on current gen is a thing of the past. The counts will be so high on PS5, you may just as well stop and admire the worlds you’ll play in.
REFLECT ON PS5
Epic’s explorer pushes on into her realistic world. PS5 is easing through the workload, effortlessly delivering incredible visuals as the sunny canyon gives way to a dark cavern. The lighting alters and shifts as we move from sunny exterior to torchlit temple interior.
The magical torchlight reflects off a multitude of metallic statues (imported directly from ZBrush with no downgrade) placed around the room, casting and magnifying light in real time through the chamber. This is new to Unreal Engine 5, called Lumen (geddit?). It’s the engine’s fully dynamic global illumination tech, which – in simple terms – means it can immediately react to changes in a scene and alterations to a game’s lighting setup.
To quote from Unreal Engine 5’s technical documentation: “The system renders diffuse interreflection with infinite bounces and indirect specular reflections in huge, detailed
“ARTISTS CAN PUT AS MUCH DETAIL IN A SCENE AS THE EYE CAN SEE.”
environments, at scales ranging from kilometres to millimetres.”
It means developers and artists can simply move the camera to relight a scene without the need to wait for lightmap bakes to finish calculating; this is a massive time-saver as anything done in the engine to tinker or test will look identical in-game, whether it’s a small room or a wide-open environment.
Imagine a game scene in which you blow a hole in a cave ceiling so the light streams in, reflecting and bouncing around you, interacting with objects and your movement, and it’s all done seamlessly in real time. This is the power of UE5 on PS5.
We see this running on PS5 as Epic’s demo moves on. Our heroine, who we are becoming more attached to as time passes, leaves the temple and returns to the sunny outside. The rock and stone statues feel baked into the world by the heat of the sun. The view is vast and unending, showing the detail we wowed at earlier can be stretched into open-world games. Now the demo lurches into full videogame spectacle.
Leaping from the temple’s altar, Lumen soars into the air – she can fly! – and flees the ancient ruin as her meddling causes everything to crack, crumble, and collapse above and around her. This sequence makes use of existing Unreal Engine tools – Chaos physics and
“DEVELOPERS CAN SIMPLY MOVE THE CAMERA TO RELIGHT A SCENE.”
Sounds awesome!!! Very excited about this next-gen console.”
Revan Wars
If the graphics get any better on these games I am going to need eye surgery to see it.”
Matt Reed
That looks simply stunning!”
Abby Wallis
One PS5 tech demo has blown the Xbox reveal out of the water.
Look at the graphics on this, I want this as a game and I don’t even care what it is!”
Ivan Reillo
Looks immense.”
Kris Clark
destruction, Niagara VFX – but inside UE5. With Lumen and Nanite delivering heightened detail and illumination in real time, rather than through scripted VFX animation, it’s pure next-gen.
NEXT GEN NOW
We’ve now glimpsed what PS5 can deliver, and it’s a clear step above PS4. Visually next gen’s appeal looks to lie in increases in detail on a par with movie CG. Yet it’s the speed and ease with which this kind of step up in spectacle is achieved that really impresses
Unreal Engine 5 and PlayStation 5 aim to offer incredible technical and artistic achievements with increased accessibility that both indies and Triple-A studios will be able to deliver equally (Epic Games is waiving the first $1 million profit a dev makes). We’ve dipped a toe into PS5’s beautiful pool and we love it. This is illuminating.