The latest iteration of Unreal Engine has always been a bit of a showstopper. It’s one of the most widely used platforms for development in the world. Their latest demonstration was just delivered and it’s certainly got some wow factor. What’s more, they said it was running on the PlayStation 5, giving us one of the best technical demonstrations of the system to date.
Unreal Engine 5
They’re aiming to improve polygon counts, textures, audio, lighting and more. They really are pushing the next-gen, allowing cinema level assets to be used without putting more strain on the engine. It dynamically renders what is needed, allowing for insane LOD. However, it should be noted that it’s unclear if that applies to moving objects, static, or both. Grab your good headphones too, the demo video below sounds pretty great!
What The Developers Had to Say
“Unreal Engine 5 empowers artists to achieve unprecedented levels of detail and interactivity, and brings these capabilities within practical reach of teams of all sizes through highly productive tools and content libraries.
Join Technical Director of Graphics Brian Karis and Special Projects Art Director Jerome Platteaux (filmed in March 2020) for an in-depth look at “Lumen in the Land of Nanite” – a real-time demonstration running live on PlayStation 5 showcasing two new core technologies that will debut in UE5: Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry, which frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see, and Lumen, a fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes.
Also present in the demo are next-gen features already available in Unreal Engine 4.25, such as Niagara VFX improvements, Chaos physics and destruction, animation system enhancements, and audio advancements. Unreal Engine 4.25 also includes support for next-gen consoles.” – YouTube
Reveal Video
Tell me More
Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see. Nanite virtualized geometry means that film-quality source art comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons can be imported directly into Unreal Engine—anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans to CAD data—and it just works. Nanite geometry is streamed and scaled in real time so there are no more polygon count budgets, polygon memory budgets, or draw count budgets; there is no need to bake details to normal maps or manually author LODs; and there is no loss in quality.
Find out more about Unreal Engine 5 here.
