Today, on May 13th, the new Unreal Engine 5 was presented. It was shown along with a demo for the PS5. And it looks really great.
What was shown? In a video, Brian Karis and Jerome Platteaux, two employees of Epic, presented the new Unreal Engine 5.
The video is said to demonstrate what is possible with the new generation of consoles when developers are provided with the appropriate technology.
Various scenes from “Lumen in the Land of Nanite” were shown, which look truly stunning. These scenes were created with the developer version of the PS5 and were not pre-rendered. They are meant to be actually playable (via Twitter).
Billions of Polygons are Possible
What is special about the engine? Two techniques are particularly notable in Unreal Engine 5:
- Nanite – A way to utilize millions and billions of polygons when creating content. The goal is to eliminate a limit. More polygons are to be created than the eye can see.
- Lumen – A solution for lighting issues. It should enable the creation of more dynamic scenes, for example, by changing sunlight angles over the course of a day or turning on lights. For this, refractions and reflections of light should be calculated realistically and in real-time.
The aim of the next generation is to achieve photorealistic content at the level of film CG. Earlier this year, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney has set photorealism as a goal.
This is made possible by an idea that, as Sweeney revealed to colleagues from Eurogamer, existed back in the 1980s: REYES – Render Everything Your Eye Sees. The engine is supposed to decide what is used to produce the best image with virtually unlimited polygons. Not all polygons will be used simultaneously, even if they are theoretically available, but only those that are important for the details of the image.
Pop-ins, meaning suddenly appearing content in the game, should also be avoided with the new techniques. A key element here will be the SSD of the PS5, which is said to be faster than any PC SSD.
For which platforms is the engine available? In addition to PC, Unreal Engine 5 will also be usable for PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, iOS, Android, and Mac.
When will the engine be released? Epic currently offers Unreal Engine 4.25 for next-gen console platforms. However, Unreal Engine 5 is expected to be available first as a preview version in early 2021 and later as a full version in late 2021.
Epic claims that backward compatibility is particularly important. Therefore, those who develop in Unreal Engine 4 now should be able to move their projects to the new engine once completed.
That Unreal Engine 4 can already look beautiful was demonstrated by the developers of Blade & Soul. They executed an upgrade from the previous UE3, which enhanced the MMORPG graphically.
