Unreal Engine 5, [UE5 Developer Availability 2022-04-05]

[Daozang]

Some of these comments feel so weird to me...
Offline rendered films, with millions of dollars budget, can't escape the uncanny valley now.
But the detail and quality I see in this demo was "good enough" for Hollywood movies just a few years back.
I guess some people have unrealistic expectations, ie, real time rendering somehow getting there first.
Because if you watch the Avengers, and see photorealism, you have to check your eyes.
Under the microscope, everything will fall apart at least for the foreseeable future.

I guess I'm just glad my expectations are such so I can still enjoy the little things in life.

 

[BitByte]

Again, this is just a weird take. I don't know what this is trying to prove. Sure, if you removed nanite you couldn't have that city with basically infinite draw distance and near perfect lod scaling. Is that supposed to be a knock, or is it just illustrating how great the technology is? And the reality is, it does have nanite. That's the whole point of tech demo.

It’s not a knock against nanite. In the post you quoted, I praised nanite. My point was that the only thing impressive about this demo was nanite. Everything else is sub par. I don’t think the whole point of the demo is nanite. The demo was created to show off the prowess of ue5 and nanite is a big component of that. It’s just that everything else is so bleh. It is what it is.

 

[Malo]

It’s not a knock against nanite. In the post you quoted, I praised nanite. My point was that the only thing impressive about this demo was nanite. Everything else is sub par. I don’t think the whole point of the demo is nanite. The demo was created to show off the prowess of ue5 and nanite is a big component of that. It’s just that everything else is so bleh. It is what it is.

IMO the lighting is also very impressive, not just nanite.

 

[techuse]

Some of these comments feel so weird to me...
Offline rendered films, with millions of dollars budget, can't escape the uncanny valley now.
But the detail and quality I see in this demo was "good enough" for Hollywood movies just a few years back.
I guess some people have unrealistic expectations, ie, real time rendering somehow getting there first.
Because if you watch the Avengers, and see photorealism, you have to check your eyes.
Under the microscope, everything will fall apart at least for the foreseeable future.

I guess I'm just glad my expectations are such so I can still enjoy the little things in life.

Avengers movies aren't perfect but they are certainly among the best and have a level of scale few movies can match.

 

[BitByte]

People are allowed to like different things, so don't take this as criticism for having a different point of view. There is baked gi, but it places limitations on the environment. There are fully real-time dynamic gi implementations, but would they work with nanite and have reasonable performance? Does any other game have the draw distance and seamless level of detail? If you look at lumen in isolation, does it look better than other GI implementations. Probably not. But the whole point is that it works with nanite. You don't have to choose between nanite and gi. You can do both. You don't have to choose between static or dynamic geometry to have gi. You can do both. Looking at each piece in isolation is missing that they all work together.

Baked GI has its limitations but the mainstream couldn’t even define GI talk-less of differentiate between the two. As far as I’m concerned, they don’t care.

As wonderful as nanite is, it still doesn’t work with foliage. Yes you have an unlimited draw distance but again, to what end. Can a more performant solution exist that gives the impression of infinite details? I’d argue that it can after all, games are nothing but smoke & mirrors.

Along with that, we have to deal with one of the worst TAA implementations I’ve seen in recent memory, TAA ghosting, low resolutions, Sub 30 fps performance with drops as low as 18fps, Screen tearing, average animation and weird physics. How can I look at those issues and argue that those compromises are worth it to have those features. Frankly I can’t.

Graphical demos and games are about making smart compromises to deliver outstanding results. Here, we’ve seen a bunch of poor compromises. This is now 2 showings of ue5 on these machines that delivers poor performance, Sub 30 fps, lowish resolutions, etc. Honestly, in its current implementation, it’s a bridge too far for the hardware. I’m more interested in epic’s optimization of these features to make them more performant.

Right now, I’m not remotely impressed by this showing.

 

[Malo]

My playthrough and experimentation in the demo

That's just insane, I've never seen anything like that. Amazing stuff!

 

[Arwin]

Bug report [emoji16]

But also good illustration of how good it can loog when flying up and looking down.

 

[iroboto]

Screens direct from the ps5 to a usb stick and then to lensdump.

tldr; you are correct.
Top One is Real - or at the least native/unmodified
Bottom one is not real/at the very least some digital manipulation happened here.

************
Top Keanu -- FFT
It's a good spectrum, not a 4K camera maybe? Or close to, some detail is lost at super high frequency, nothing really crazy here.

Top Keanu -- DCT
Smooth - no aberrations or blemishes

Bottom Keanu -- FFT
For something that looks largely the same, this is a very different spectrum!

Bottom Keanu -- DCT
Showing lots of artifact patterns and blemishes top left corner. This would be detected as a deep fake.

 

[DavidGraham]

Along with that, we have to deal with one of the worst TAA implementations I’ve seen in recent memory, TAA ghosting, low resolutions, Sub 30 fps performance with drops as low as 18fps, Screen tearing, average animation and weird physics. How can I look at those issues and argue that those compromises are worth it to have those features. Frankly I can’t.

This isn't a game! This is a graphical demo to showcase graphics and details, with the added bonus of letting you roam around freely, if Epic were to cut short the demo after Trinity leaves no one would do anything but praise the visuals.

Also, the demo would be an excellent benchmark for PCs when it's released.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

eh nm

 

[Flappy Pannus]

Can a more performant solution exist that gives the impression of infinite details? I’d argue that it can after all, games are nothing but smoke & mirrors.

Hey, graphics engine programmers - you should make a much better version of this, because graphics are all like, faked in the end man.

 

[dobwal]

Maybe Epic should go back to showing cutscenes on Nvidia’s latest and greatest. Like Infiltrator which was shown on a 680 or Samaritan which was shown a triple SLI setup with 580s.

I’m sure a 3090 with a top notch cpu would handle this demo a lot better than the consoles.

But at least this demo gives a better ideal of what UE5 on consoles may offer. Because the two previously mentioned demos did little to show off what’s possible on consoles. I’m still waiting on a console game that comes close.

I give credit to Epic for using console hardware because it’s way easier to unimpress people when using mid tier GPUs and mobile like CPUs. But it provides a more realistic outlook on what type of graphics we going to see on these sub $500 devices.

 

[Slifer]

I do think that for an 'open world', Spidey/Miles look way better, but it is also true that this demo is trying to do something quite a bit different. The real question is whether Spidey/Miles would look and run as good as it does if it were made and optimised on UE5? Now that's an interesting question.

The sub-30fps framerate during driving is very disappointing particularly in an demo. This is no better than GTA5 running on PS4 when it released. Just a bit more realistic but with much less gaming interactions and logic.

For now the best "next-gen" city is still Spiderman + RT at 60fps (and more stable than this sub-30fps). In the UE5 there is GI, it's a bit more realistic on a screenshot, but 30fps is too much of a downgrade and in motion Spiderman is much better looking. People have forgotten how sharp, smooth and realistic Spider-man is. For me this is the definition of next-gen: ~1440p + RT + 60fps.

You do realize there is a huge difference between static baked GI vs dynamic GI?
Lumen is the most expensive feature of UE5 by a huge factor.
If they disabled Lumen and used baked GI (GPU Lightmass) instead this would run at 60fps with ease!

Not only that but they already came out and said they left a huge head room in the CPU for gameplay logic. All this was done in a year versus 5 years for spidey.. This is also bigger in scale in basically every category (world size, etc)

 

[zed]

You do realize there is a huge difference between static baked GI vs dynamic GI?
Lumen is the most expensive feature of UE5 by a huge factor.
If they disabled Lumen and used baked GI (GPU Lightmass) instead this would run at 60fps with ease!

Not only that but they already came out and said they left a huge head room in the CPU for gameplay logic. All this was done in a year versus 5 years for spidey.. This is also bigger in scale in basically every category (world size, etc)

Yes I assume it would
this matrix demo sometimes you have to wonder is it real or not like I posted here
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...raphics-2020-spawn.62183/page-19#post-2185883
where I downplay cyberpunk/spiderman as you never think its real, everything is just the same stuff as higher quality and at higher res

edit: Hats off to the devs, if you look at the digital foundry screenshots, its pretty much the same in series X and ps5, execlant parity. Oddly theres one shot with the yellow taxi has differnt license plates in all 3 versions, odd cause AFAIKS the other cars have the saem plates.

 

[Karamazov]

i may had that though the action is pretty scripted, it's not baked, as you can have different car crashes during that sequence, it's not alway exactly the same

like here that car fliped on the top of another car, it does not happen in the official unreal video

 

[Karamazov]

 

[London Geezer]

You do realize there is a huge difference between static baked GI vs dynamic GI?
Lumen is the most expensive feature of UE5 by a huge factor.
If they disabled Lumen and used baked GI (GPU Lightmass) instead this would run at 60fps with ease!

Not only that but they already came out and said they left a huge head room in the CPU for gameplay logic. All this was done in a year versus 5 years for spidey.. This is also bigger in scale in basically every category (world size, etc)

I probably didn’t express myself properly.

I think this demo looked “unreal”. My only complaint is that I’d have loved to be able to pause and move the camera around in the first section with the characters and the other scene with the car chase.

Comparisons with Miles have been thrown around and in my eyes I find Miles in quality mode (so 30Hz just like this demo) to be more pleasing to my eyes. But I did specify that Miles is doing things differently so it’s not really a fair comparison. Also it was a huge investment compared to this little demo that took a year to make.

 

[trinibwoy]

IMO the lighting is also very impressive, not just nanite.

The materials and shading are extremely impressive. The least impressive bit for me was the character models that still look and animate like mannequins. Also the low resolution shadows are really out of place in a demo like this. What happened to VSMs?

The hellblade II gameplay trailer was also absolutely bonkers and more impressive in some ways than the Matrix demo. UE5 is shaping up real nice.

 

[Sonic]

Looks nice enough to me where I think we have a good idea to expect from a new Spiderman or GTA game in terms of visuals when it comes to a city scape. The character models aren't that impressive in the city explorer mode but I understand they're not the focus here. The lighting system looks fantastic to me and completely dynamic. Very nice. Geometric complexity is a big step up in many places and it's nice using the nanite view to see it in action. The performance is horrid while driving often giving the impression of a stop motion movie. Overall I find it to be highly impressive. With some optimization and more experience with the hardware I would love to see visuals like this hit 60 fps.

 

[Karamazov]

would be nice to mesure the power usage of consoles in this demo