Unreal Engine 5: 10 Stunning Demos That Show the Future of Video Game Graphics
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Unreal Engine 5 is still in its earliest days, but some developers are already showing how it will change the way we look at games.
By Aaron Greenbaum | |
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Photo: Epic Games, Pasquale Scionti, The Coalition, Tyson Butler-Boschma, AFK — The Webseries
Developers have access to an array of video game engines that help power their projects. Some studios stick to their own proprietary engines, such as CD Projekt RED’s REDengine and Capcom’s RE Engine, but other studios use more widely available digital toolboxes to create games. For years, one of the most popular and influential game engines has been the Unreal Engine.
The Unreal Engine was originally developed by Epic Games for its 1998 FPS Unreal. The toolset has since been through several iterations that all demonstrate an uncanny ability to power almost every video game genre imaginable and also deliver top-notch graphics. The Unreal Engine is just as at home in shooters such as BioShock and Gears of War as it is in RPGs like Dragon Quest XI and The Last Remnant.
On April 5, 2022, Epic Games officially released its latest creation, Unreal Engine 5, to the masses. While many big-name developers got their hands on the program early to develop upcoming titles such as Redfall and Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, several smaller devs and modders have used Unreal Engine 5 to demo the future of video game graphics.
Spoiler alert: It’s unreal.
Imagining Starfield In Unreal Engine 5
Bethesda’s upcoming sci-fi RPG Starfield has been caught in development hell for quite a while, and while the game will finally launch in 2023 (barring another delay), one prolific content creature decided to share their vision of the upcoming title.
When Enfant Terrible isn’t reposting game trailers, they are creating their own fake trailers for both imaginary and real games. One of their latest videos is Imagining Starfield, which blends various sci-fi assets into an Unreal Engine 5-fueled display. The result is full of breathtaking alien vistas, sprawling industrial colonies, and burgeoning metropolises.
Starfield‘s visuals obviously won’t measure up to Enfant Terrible’s vision, though many are certainly dreaming of a day when a Bethesda open-world RPG looks like this.
Etchū-Daimon Station
Some like to envision a future where you can’t tell the difference between computer-generated graphics and real life.
This demo suggests that the future might already be here.
One of the most terrifyingly realistic Unreal Engine 5 demos is Lorenzo Drago’s Etchū-Daimon Station. The video faithfully recreates the real Etchū-Daimon Station in Japan, and you would be forgotten for assuming it’s a video of the actual location since it’s so realistic. However, the video’s cheery day is quickly replaced with a foreboding and foggy night that wouldn’t look out of place in a horror game.
Skyrim In Unreal Engine 5
When The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim launched, players were blown away by the game’s graphics. Still, with the many evolutions in video game graphics since Skyrim‘s 2011 debut, many can’t help but wonder what Skyrim would look like if it were released today.
To offer a taste of what such a project might look like, environment artist Christian Gomm recreated the town of Riverwood in Unreal Engine 5.
The difference between the original version and Gomm’s version is night and day, as the unofficial Unreal 5 remake is just significantly smoother overall and far more realistic.
Now that Gomm has given audiences a taste of Skyrim in Unreal 5, we’re left wanting more. Here’s hoping The Elder Scrolls VI will end up looking fairly close to this artist’s vision.
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The Coalition – “The Cavern”
While Epic Games is no longer in charge of the Gears of War franchise, each series entry is still built with the Unreal Engine. The series’ current developers, The Coalition, recently released a tech demo that has some dreaming of Gears 6.
The Cavern is a cinematic test reel that shows off just how many triangles developers can cram into Unreal Engine 5 graphical assets.
While the characters and locations in the video aren’t indicative of an in-development title, the video’s lighting, high-fidelity models, and ray tracing sure are. Plus, all these assets come together to create a clip that surpasses most blockbuster movie CGI.
If future Coalition projects look even half as good as The Cavern, Gears 6 just might be the most beautiful video game ever.
NEXTGEN Terrain Physics
The Unreal Engine is a powerful tool on its own, but developers can also create plug-ins to either improve the tool or add new functions. One of the best ways to show off a custom addition’s capabilities is via video demonstration.
The Brushify.io toolkit is touted as a premier worldbuilding system for Unreal, and to show off its latest iteration, creator Joe Garth posted a video that demonstrates the tool in Unreal 5. Dubbed the NEXTGEN Terrain Physics, the toolkit creates a surprisingly realistic landscape that can deform in real-time without dropping framerates, all with realistic physics.
With the NEXTGEN Terrain Physics and Unreal 5, any developer can turn their next game into a photorealistic Minecraft.
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FIRST DAY – A Star Wars Short Film
While Unreal Engine 5 is a powerful tool for game developers, it has uses in other industries. Enterprising content creators can potentially use the engine to create videos and skits.
While the YouTube channel AFK – The Webseries mostly produces an ongoing series of gamers who got morphed into their MMO characters, the channel recently added Star Wars skits powered by Unreal Engine 5. So far, the channel has posted three episodes — First Day, The Battlefield, and Greener Grass — and each demonstrates how Unreal Engine 5 can potentially streamline the process of creating comedic fan skits.
If AKF – The Webseries’ small collection of Star Wars videos is any indication, Unreal Engine 5 can help anyone who wants to make the next Red vs.
Blue. It may even eventually help power a new generation of Star Wars titles.
Superman In the Matrix
So far, the only Unreal Engine 5 game currently available is The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience., which was primarily designed to show off the Unreal Engine 5’s power on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. While the demo is impressive by itself, modders took it one step further.
Last year, game developer Tyson Butler-Boschma, also known as TjAtomica, fooled around in Unreal Engine 5 and created a basic simulator that lets players fly around a city as Superman. This teaser, dubbed Project Flight, was cool but barebones. When the Matrix Awakens demo was released, TjAtomica decided it was time for an update. He took the same flying mechanics and model from his game and modded them into the Matrix Awakens demo. The result is as fun and beautiful as it sounds.
Silent Hill in Unreal Engine 5
The Unreal Engine 5 can do more than just provide realistic models and textures. The toolset also comes with a robust atmospheric lighting and effects engine perfect for any horror game.
Ninja Theory’s Senior Lighting Artist Pasquale Scionti has shown off the power of Unreal Engine 5 with numerous videos, including one inspired by Silent Hill. The demo only shows a heavily wooded road flanked by a gas station and “Welcome to Silent Hill” sign, but it gets the job done by shifting the scene’s tone from welcoming to foreboding with just some lighting and heavy fog.
Perhaps Konami should let Ninja Theory make the next Silent Hill game. Scionti demonstrated he’s got the game’s oppressive atmosphere down pat, all thanks to Unreal Engine 5.
Raining in the Jungle
Fluid physics are a crucial part of many modern games. If water doesn’t behave realistically, players might be taken out of the moment, and Unreal 5 demonstrates we don’t have to worry about that anymore.
VFX artist Ramón Monsanto has posted several videos made with Unreal Engine 5, and one of his most impressive projects is Raining in Jungle 1 and 2. The names are self-explanatory, as the videos show how dense rain can get in Unreal 5 environments. However, the meat of the demos lies in how the rain realistically covers plants and rocks in a fine film and also runs down hills to form miniature rivers.
If Monsanto’s demo is any indication, Unreal Engine 5 makes creating weather effects more idiot-proof than ever without sacrificing beauty.
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Project Grunt
When developing video games, you need a proof of concept first. While you can make your own assets, you can also take inspiration from another product to save time.
The YouTube channel AXCEL is full of demos made in Unreal Engine 5, most of which are fan remakes of Warcraft content. Their most prolific work is Project Grunt, which revolves around an everyday orc grunt.
Axcel created their own Orgrimmar gates to demonstrate the scope of landmarks capable through Unreal 5, animation tests that display the grunt’s fighting capabilities, and more, all through the lens of actual gameplay.
While Project Grunt will never be an official game due to legal reasons, they still demonstrate that Unreal Engine 5 is a robust and beautiful engine, even when it powers a rogue demonstration.
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Aaron Greenbaum
Aaron Greenbaum is a freelance games and pop-culture journalist who thrives on the latest gaming industry news and video game trivia. He also writes comic books…
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Gears of War studio show off Unreal Engine 5 tech demo
As part of yesterday’s big Unreal Engine 5 showcase, the studio behind Gears Of War 4 & 5 showed off a new tech demo built on Epic’s fancy newness.
Microsoft say it demonstrates «100x more graphic detail», which will really throw off all my reviews rating visuals on a scale of 1-5 stars. Come watch The Coalition’s vid to gaze deep into a man’s pores and coo over aggressive fog, but don’t assume the tech demo reveals any specific game they’re making.
Watch on YouTube
In an Xbox blog interview, The Coalition technical director Kate Rayner explained the studio are «not ready to talk about our next game» but they are happy to talk up tech like UE5’s Nanite geometry system (which can pump out squillions of polygons) and Lumen dynamic global illumination system.
«You can see the impact of Nanite already in our cinematic tech test, which enables full-quality movie assets to be rendered in real time,» she said. «This means that our artists can create assets with tens of millions of polygons, scalable to scenes with billions and billions. The details are just incredible, more than 100 times what was possible before. Just looking at the eyeball detail the number of vertices and polygons are the equivalent of what an entire character would have been in the previous generation of games.
«You also see how we’re doing new things with light. Fully dynamic real-time global illumination lighting has been a long sought-after feature, but up until now, it’s not been possible on console. Lumen is a total game-changer.»
The march towards ‘photorealism’ is the most boring part of video game visuals, and adding numbers to it in marketing exercises is even more boring, but I do look forward to seeing what happens when anything with a remotely interesting aesthetic gets going with the tech. I’ve long said that the main benefit of shiny new tech is letting devs with more ambition than experience get away with unoptimised games. I assume the main reason people are buying GeForce 3090s is to play scrappy walking simulators which attempt to render an entire full-scale alien planet at once while spraying billions of particles. Why else?
To be slightly less facetious, the tech is helpful for developers of all sorts. Rayner says that UE5 removes several friction points from their workflow.
She explains, «with Nanite we no longer have to manually create low polygon versions of models, and with Lumen, not having to see ‘the lighting needs to be rebuilt’ and waiting for offline static lighting to be re-baked – greatly speeds up the development process.»
That’s good. That’s definitely good. That’s great. That can help all devs, and all games they make. Maybe some of those games will even be about people who aren’t covered head-to-toe in straps and buckles.
Along with the full launch of Unreal Engine 5, yesterday’s event also brought news on a new Tomb Raider game build in UE5. No, that one will surely have straps and buckles too.
Unreal Engine 5 tech demo showed off a photorealistic
Epic Games showed off the latest version of their commercial Unreal Engine 5 game engine. capable next-generation gaming equipment.
The demo itself looks extremely photorealistic, especially for the environmental elements.
The video follows a young woman as she explores an archaeological dig in the style of a Lara Croft game. The demonstration culminates in a flight-jump sequence through a valley amid crumbling architecture. And at this point, you can take your breath away. nine0003
What’s particularly interesting about this demo is that it runs on PS5. This is the first glimpse of what Sony’s next generation console will be capable of in terms of graphics and performance. Until now, we have not seen what the games look like on future consoles. Even recent Xbox Series X streams didn’t include gameplay footage.
The most noteworthy features of Unreal Engine 5 are Nanite and Lumen. In the video, Epic Games CTO of Graphics Brian Karis and Special Project Art Director Jerome Plato talk about these two technologies that are the basis of the new engine. nine0003
Nanite allows developers to add high quality assets directly to the engine without having to worry about their polygon count being too high.
Nanite will render them within the limits of the system. The technology will allow «to create as many geometric details as the eye can see.» The company’s goal is to «achieve photorealism on a par with computer graphics and real life,» and Nanite will help realize this goal.
Lumen is a dynamic lighting system that is capable of displaying lighting in real time. The system should significantly speed up lighting design for artists. It can calculate scene lighting dynamics, whether on a millimeter or kilometer scale, and adjust to changes in the environment, such as a flashlight turning on or the sun moving. nine0003
Epic Games seem to be aiming not only for technical prowess but also for ease of use for developers.
“Our goal is not just to provide more options for developers. The most difficult problem in game development right now is that creating quality games requires a huge investment of time and money. Therefore, we want to make the life of developers easier and more productive,” said CEO Tim Sweeney.
UE5 will be released a little later than next generation consoles. Its full release will take place at the end of 2021. Once launched, the engine will be compatible with next-gen and current-gen consoles, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android.
Unreal Engine 4.25 will also be supported on the new consoles, which means developers can start developing PS5 and Xbox Series X games in the current version of the engine and then migrate those projects to Unreal Engine 5 when it becomes fully available.
Unreal by Epic Games is already one of the most widely used game engines. It is used by both game developers and directors. Engine versions have defined their respective gaming eras to some extent: UE3 dominated the PS3/XBox 360 era, UE4 is common on the current PS4/XBox One generation and has been used in recent hits like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Final Fantasy VII Remake . At the same time, the engine is already almost six years old.
Epic also announced that Fortnite will be available on PS5 and Xbox Series X.
The game will be ported from UE4, its current engine, to UE5 in 2021. nine0003
Unreal Engine 5 tech demo uses «cinematic quality» assets and runs on modern hardware : GameZ=
In 2013, Epic Games demonstrated the power of Unreal Engine 4 with the Infiltrator Demo. It looked incredible at the time and you can still read the amazing comments from 7 years ago on YouTube. Of course, today a sci-fi vignette looks just like that. It’s amazing how quickly incredible technology becomes everyday. nine0003
Well, let’s go again: Unreal Engine 5 is coming out next year and Epic Games will be featuring a new PlayStation 5 technology demo called Lumen in the Land of Nanite to showcase it (embedded above). As with this Infiltrator demo from 2013, it looks somewhat unreasonable, with dynamically lit, photorealistic caves and then, at the end, an entire crumbling city in equally detailed detail.
According to Epic, UE5 developers will no longer have to worry about polygon count. They can import 3D objects consisting of hundreds of millions or even billions of polygons, and the engine will handle the rest, rendering this highly complex geometry at the highest possible level of detail. nine0003
This doesn’t mean drawing all 10 billion polygons in every frame, because some of them are much, much smaller than a pixel. Tim Sweeney the startup claimed to have discovered the secret of infinitely detailed atomic rendering, and then nothing would come of the supposedly revolutionary technology. But according to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, polygon does count as a measure of graphic fidelity. nine0003 (Image credit: Epic Games)
«The philosophy behind this goes back to the 1980s with the idea of REYES, ‘Make Everything Your Eyes Sees’ is a fun acronym that means given the almost endless availability of detail, the engine’s job is to figure out exactly what pixels to draw to show it,” Sweeney said on a conference call with PC Gamer and others this week.
“That doesn’t mean you have to draw all 10 billion polygons every frame, because some of them are much, much smaller than a pixel. This means that you can display an approximation that does not miss any detail that you can perceive. And once you get to that point, you’re done with the geometry. There is nothing more you can do. And if you rendered more polygons, you wouldn’t notice it because they contribute an infinitesimal amount to every pixel on the screen.» nine0003
In addition to looking cool, the hope is that UE5’s capabilities will make cross-platform development easier for smaller developers who only need one set of high-quality resources. The engine handles any complexity, up to phones.
«If you have bespoke assets like statues, creating a high resolution mesh is one thing, then making it work well and look good at different view distances is actually quite a lot of work and we wanted to remove that “, said Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri. «It was a few years of experimentation before we landed where we did.
» nine0003
Even movie-quality assets can be used in a UE5 game, and the tech demo was done primarily using Quixel Megascans.
«Nanite’s virtualized geometry means that a film-quality source image containing hundreds of millions or billions of polygons can be imported directly into Unreal Engine — from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetric scans to CAD data — and it just works,» Epic said in press release. nine0003
As clever as this rendering technology is, polycounts have already come out due to game resource limits — it sounds amazing that billions of polygons can be used, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be able to render film-quality environments easily scanned. To get the results you see in the demo, you’ll need good hardware, but it’s available for modern gaming PCs.
“There are a number of different components required at this level of detail,” says Sweeney. “One of them is GPU performance and GPU architecture to create an incredible amount of geometry. You are talking about a very large number of teraflops required for this. The second is the ability to download and transfer it efficiently.” nine0003
Will this demo work on my RTX 2070 Super PC? Yes, according to Libreri, and I should get «pretty good» numbers. For comparison, the demo video was shot at 10.28 teraflops on the PlayStation 5 GPU, and just over 9 teraflops on the RTX 2070 Super. (Note that teraflops are not all).
(Image credit: Epic Games)
Regarding downloading and streaming, however, Sweeney says the PlayStation 5’s SSD architecture is «rich» and «well ahead of PC», but you should still get «amazing performance» with an NVMe SSD that I use . One thing is for sure, if you haven’t already, it’s time to ditch the hard drives Sweeney doesn’t expect anyone to download games from in the near future.
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“One of the big efforts that has been made and continues in Unreal Engine 5 is to optimize next generation storage to speed up loading at a multiple of current performance,” he said. «Not just a little faster, but a lot faster so that you can bring in that geometry and display it, even though it won’t fit in memory.»
Sweeney seemed surprised when I said that until recently I loaded some of my games from the hard drive. I’ve spent my sweet time upgrading an SSD-only system, but I’m sure I’m not the only one — if you’re still not fully switched, be prepared to be obsolete within the next few years. It had to happen eventually. nine0003 (Image credit: Epic Games)
Also showcased in the technology demo: a new lighting technology called Lumen, a neat particle system that can mimic the behavior of bat swarms and cockroaches, a Chaos physics system, and ambisonics rendering (360-degree surround sound). I’ve been told that this will all work well with Nvidia’s RTX ray tracing, though there’s no concrete word on that or what Nvidia’s DLSS performance could potentially bring to UE5 games.
