Gears of War: E-Day makes heavy use of hardware ray tracing

Gears of War: E-Day will be a lot more detailed that Gears 5

Gears of War: E-Day was one of the major highlights of Microsoft’s recent Xbox Games Showcase. The game’s trailer showcased spectacular visuals, with the game promising “unprecedented levels of graphical fidelity”.

The Coalition has stated that the game will feature “over 100 times” more environmental and character detail. Beyond that, the game will feature extensive support for hardware ray tracing. With this new Gears game we have ray traced reflections, ray traced lighting, and ray traced shadows. Add on “next-generation destruction and gore”, and we have some cutting-edge graphics on our hands.

This new Gears of War game has been created to take “full advantage” of Unreal Engine 5. With Unreal Engine 5.4, the engine’s advanced features have become much more performant. With this in mind, we expect the Coalition to be using the latest version of Unreal Engine 5 to build their latest game.

“With the advancements in Unreal Engine 5, the leap in technical capabilities is tremendous,” explains Kate Rayner, Studio Technical Director at The Coalition. This includes over 100 times more environment and character details than Gears 5, hardware raytraced lighting, reflections and shadows, next generation destruction and gore, and cutting-edge animation technology, to name just a few of the countless improvements that will make Gears of War: E-Day an unrivalled visual experience.

The Coalition has confirmed that their first trailer for E-Day is an in-engine trailer that uses real game assets. This trailer wasn’t a pre-rendered CGI, it was Unreal Engine 5.

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