Epic Games has revealed Unreal Engine 5 and it looks gorgeous

Epic Games has revealed Unreal Engine 5 and it looks gorgeous

Epic Games has revealed Unreal Engine 5 and it looks gorgeous

Unreal Engine 5 is coming, and Epic Games’ demo for the engine is showcasing what’s possible with next-generation hardware. Below, we have footage of Epic’s Unreal Engine 5 tech demo running on PlayStation 5 hardware, highlighting what could be possible on next-generation systems and future gaming PCs.  

This demo highlights several new features for Unreal Engine 5, including Epic Games’ “micropolygon geometry”, which offers per-pixel geometry for LOD-free visuals, Lumen Dynamic Global Illumination and other new effects. Note that none of these effects utilises the attracting hardware within next-generation consoles, making it possible for visuals to be pushed further on next-generation hardware. 

Unreal Engine 5 is due to release in preview form in early 2021, with a full release later in the year. The Engine will support all current-generation consoles, iOS, Android PC and Mac OS platforms. In mid-2021, Epic Games plans to migrate Fortnite into Unreal Engine 5, adding new features to the game while pushing visuals to new heights on modern systems.  

Another system within Unreal Engine 5 is “Temporal Accumulation”, which uses data from earlier frames to increase the resolution of the latest frame. Think of it like the next-stage of Temporal Anti-Aliasing, adding a technique similar to image reconstruction into the mix to increase image clarity. This system is also said to make Unreal Engine 5’s Global Illumination system a lot more efficient, allowing it to work on modern hardware.  

The demo below runs on PlayStation 5 with a variable resolution, though Unreal Engine 5’s Temporal Accumulation does a great job hiding this fact. The demo also runs at 30FPS, as should be expected from a demo for cutting-edge visuals. 

The Unreal Engine 5 Demo below is running on PlayStation 5, but the demo sin;t said to be playing to the specific strengths of the platform. This means that similar graphical feats should be possible on PC and Xbox Series X, and greater graphical feats when the features of each next-generation platform are fully utilised.  

One of the features that make this demo possible is the storage capabilities of Sony’s PlayStation 5, as the storage bandwidth of the PS5’s NVMe SSD allows data to be fed into games at a faster rate than ever before. This allows assets to be loaded into the game at an exceptionally fast rate, which is great news for fast-paced games and titles with high-quality artwork. 
 

Unreal Engine 5 will be available in preview form in early 2021, which means that gamers shouldn’t expect to see 3rd party games using the engine for a few years. 

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