Unreal Engine 5, [UE5 Developer Availability 2022-04-05]
- Thread starter mpg1
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Silent_Buddha
Legend
some screenshot from PS5 version
Man, that is absolutely gorgeous. Will UE 5.1 finally lead to the death of cardboard cutout vegetation (especially visible and icky where LOD kicks in) in games? If so that might be the single greatest advancement in 3D rendering in the past 20 years.
Regards,
SB
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Inuhanyou
Veteran
You can tell immediately that lumen makes great difference. On the top left of the screen the shelf with the pottery grounds the items in the world now.
And that shot above with the sunlight bleeding all throughout the room with indirect light bounces is amazing. Software lumen really is great substitute for normal global RT
Inuhanyou
Veteran
The problem with this is that the nanite is so good it makes the normal 2D assets of the game stick out more (the leaves on the ground, the 2D texture)
Inuhanyou
Veteran
This is what ultimate power gives you. Reckless flaunting of it
Basic ass 2D texture for wall vs INDIVIDUALLY 3D RAISED TILES
I gotta say tho this really is impressive with luman and nanite it's like going from N64 to PS4 level graphics in just a single update
Right beside the super low poly bath tub :S
Fortnite has a TON of content though, so I don't envy the task of updating it all to higher levels of fidelity. It'll happen gradually over time I imagine, this is just a first step to get all the basic tech in there and working.
Give it a shot and see what you think. It's definitely not perfect and compromises had to be made for 60fps on consoles of course, but it LODs pretty well all things considered and doesn't use any alpha test (it's all geo). Feels like an improvement at least, but probably not the end state. Foliage in the distance almost certainly needs to turn into some kind of volumetric representation in the long run.
Do you know the specifications the consoles are running? I assume its TSR 1080p to 4K at high settings like Epic was targeting? HW-RT or SW-Lumen?
Would be really interesting to know how Epic achieved Real Time GI at 60 fps on consoles!
DavidGraham
Veteran
So here is my experience:
Nanite:
Pros: Amazing LOD, it's pretty cool to play a game where LOD doesn't pop in and out every second .. it's transformative IMO.
Cons: The assets quality are not good, so they are not that outstanding from any other assets you will see in any game. They need more work. Also there is some pop in for very small objects and grass.
Lumen:
Pros: GI everywhere, it's also dynamic, you destroy a roof, and the lighting inside the buidling changes accordingly. There was this diner with red tiled walls, with the sun shining all over it, the floor and the interior lighting was red as a result of the light relfecting from the walls. I immediately proceeded to bring down the walls, the lighting changed and no longer became red.
Cons: Doesn't apply to dynamic objects like characters, I entered a very dark corner and my character still had this static lighting all over him also in the diner, my character wasn't affected by the red lighting.
Relfections:
Pros: dynamic off screen reflections on relfective surfaces for objects.
Cons: no character reflections, water reflections is still SSR for dynamic objects.
HW-Lumen:
Pros: applies to dynamic objects and characters, in the diner, my character was affected by the red lighting.
Cons: still not accurate enough .. in the dark corner, my character had some rims of static lighting over him.
HW-Reflections:
Pros: character reflections appear on reflective surfaces (cars, metals, .. etc)
Cons: Some surfaces have noisy reflections in them, also water still have SSR elements.
In general, the visual upgrades are massive, but stuttering is still present, sometimes in a big way, also no DLSS2 or FSR2. Shadows from VSM are not impressive.
Nanite:
Pros: Amazing LOD, it's pretty cool to play a game where LOD doesn't pop in and out every second .. it's transformative IMO.
Cons: The assets quality are not good, so they are not that outstanding from any other assets you will see in any game. They need more work. Also there is some pop in for very small objects and grass.
Lumen:
Pros: GI everywhere, it's also dynamic, you destroy a roof, and the lighting inside the buidling changes accordingly. There was this diner with red tiled walls, with the sun shining all over it, the floor and the interior lighting was red as a result of the light relfecting from the walls. I immediately proceeded to bring down the walls, the lighting changed and no longer became red.
Cons: Doesn't apply to dynamic objects like characters, I entered a very dark corner and my character still had this static lighting all over him also in the diner, my character wasn't affected by the red lighting.
Relfections:
Pros: dynamic off screen reflections on relfective surfaces for objects.
Cons: no character reflections, water reflections is still SSR for dynamic objects.
HW-Lumen:
Pros: applies to dynamic objects and characters, in the diner, my character was affected by the red lighting.
Cons: still not accurate enough .. in the dark corner, my character had some rims of static lighting over him.
HW-Reflections:
Pros: character reflections appear on reflective surfaces (cars, metals, .. etc)
Cons: Some surfaces have noisy reflections in them, also water still have SSR elements.
In general, the visual upgrades are massive, but stuttering is still present, sometimes in a big way, also no DLSS2 or FSR2. Shadows from VSM are not impressive.
Brb, going to buy a 4090 lol.
My 3080 can get about 80 fps with everything maxed out and TSR set to recommended, which is scaling from 60% at 1440p. Lumen set to High instead of Epic gives a nice bump, I think closer to 100 fps. I put virtualized shadows to medium, got a nice bump and honestly the difference didn't stand out to me. Maybe just lower resolution shadows? Nanite is the real win because everything looks detailed at a distance and I never noticed any pop in with draw distance set to epic. I'll probably keep shadows at medium, nanite on and then disable lumen if I'm actually playing to win.
Fortnite was the best thing to happen to UE. They have a real shipping game with a massive player base to test out every new UE innovation and optimize it.
My 3080 can get about 80 fps with everything maxed out and TSR set to recommended, which is scaling from 60% at 1440p. Lumen set to High instead of Epic gives a nice bump, I think closer to 100 fps. I put virtualized shadows to medium, got a nice bump and honestly the difference didn't stand out to me. Maybe just lower resolution shadows? Nanite is the real win because everything looks detailed at a distance and I never noticed any pop in with draw distance set to epic. I'll probably keep shadows at medium, nanite on and then disable lumen if I'm actually playing to win.
Fortnite was the best thing to happen to UE. They have a real shipping game with a massive player base to test out every new UE innovation and optimize it.
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Just for your information, setting Virtual Shadow Maps below Epic disables shadows for foliage which has a huge impact on visual fidelity. This is enabled on the consoles (just started my analysis in case Epic is not disclosing console settings)
View Distance and effects are also set to Epic. It's probably only GI and reflections that are set to High. But further investigation from me is required to confirm. Feels like I'm becoming a little Dictator here, hehe!
I don't want to misquote the details so take with a big grain of salt, but the resolution is dynamic on consoles (as it has always been). I don't know what the typical is as fortnite is a very dynamic game, but I believe the target is around 60% (so generally above 1080).
Not sure on the specific Lumen settings unfortunately. They obviously had to cut a bunch of stuff back for 60fps but I think there's still a nice visual benefit from it.
Shouldn't be any pop from Nanite stuff specifically, but HLOD will sometimes remove things. It's probably more aggressive than it needs to be given Nanite, but that can be updated over time. There's also a few props that are not Nanite... for no specific reason other than being overlooked in some cases.
It definitely does apply to dynamic objects and characters (no specific limitations I know of). Do note though that there's some special "hero lighting" type things that happen with your player character for gameplay reasons to keep it nice and visible against the background. Not sure about red lighting not applying, but there's nothing specific to characters that I know of beyond the special lighting on the player character.
Obviously compromises have to be made for 60fps fully dynamic world/sun where caching is basically useless, but while I'm obviously biased I think you might be underselling the differences a little. The main one is just that everything casts shadows now, and the shadows go out to the horizon instead of basically disappearing/becoming at best screen space 100m from you
Contact shadows are still enabled on top of VSM in that build but that will likely change in the future which should clean up a few of the artifacts where the contact shadows are just incorrect (VSM is generally more accurate). You also get soft shadows with contact hardening now, which is particularly noticeable on local lights.Anyways it's not exactly a shadows showcase with the content and style of Fortnite but I do think it's a decent bump in quality to not have - ex. your glider just smear away all the shadows while you parachute because they were only ever screen space in the first place
Uhh it shouldn't... could be some kind of bug I guess, but that would be surprising to me. The main thing the VSM scalability settings affect on PC is the filter quality/noise. I think Epic bumps the resolution a bunch too IIRC but I don't remember the specifics of where that landed.
Hm, strange. Here's an imgsli comparison:
Then it very well might be a bug. It was odd to me too that High straight up disabled VSM on foliage instead of lowering quality.
DavidGraham
Veteran
What is the difference between HW-Lumen and SW-Lumen in this game then? For GI specifically.
I also have trouble finding that out. The difference I saw in the menu was due to a bug (black shadow blop behind my avatar)
As the setting requires a restart, it's very hard to compare and the TOD is always different. I also noticed worse frame times and more stutters when it was enabled, though that might be just my machine. I can't really recommend enabling HW-RT. SW-Lumen already looks so good.
It really feels like HW-RT is not important anymore in UE, since SW-Lumen does such a great job :/
My hope is that DXR will get a new version in the near future which would allow this version of Lumen to be hardware accelerated.
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