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

[DavidGraham]

So in the past week or so, we had several UE5.1+ titles released on PC, to form some sort of a preliminary picture concerning it's performance on current PC hardware.

The first example is the game called "Satisfactory", featuring Software Lumen without Nanite, the game allows you to toggle Software Lumen off and on, and examine the performance. Problem is, with Lumen activated, fps takes a huge hit, @4K the 4090 dropped from 150fps without Lumen to just 44fps with Lumen, a 4080/7900XTX dropped from 108/118 fps to just 28fps.

In effect, for Ada/RDNA3 GPUs, Lumen off is at least 3x times faster than Software Lumen. For Ampere/RDNA2, the picture is quite worse, Lumen off is 4x times faster on the 3080Ti, while being 5X times faster on a 6900XT.

4090: 44 fps
4080: 28 fps
7900XTX: 28 fps
3080Ti: 20 fps
6900XT: 16 fps

Satisfactory: PC Performance Benchmarks for Graphics Cards and Processors | RPG/Role Playing | GPU TEST

We have tested the Satisfactory game at the highest graphics settings, on video cards from the GEFORCE RTX and RADEON RX series. Satisfactory was the first game from a third-party developer to receiv

gamegpu.tech

The second example is the game Layers of Fear, with it's use of Hardware Lumen, without Nanite, at 4K max settings it runs well only on the 4090.

4090: 75 fps
7900XTX: 50 fps
3080: 37 fps
6800XT: 30 fps

Layers of Fear im Technik-Test: Das erste "echte" Spiel mit Unreal Engine 5? [Update]

Layers of Fear 2023 im Technik-Test: Benchmarks & Fazit

www.pcgameshardware.de

The third example is the playable demo called "The Old West: Northwood", featuring Hardware Lumen + Nanite, the demo is extremely heavy even at 1080p, as a 4090 barely did 41fps.

4090: 41fps
4080: 31 fps
7900XTX: 22 fps
3080Ti: 21 fps
6900XT: 13 fps

The Old West: Northwood: PC Performance Benchmarks for Graphics Cards and Processors | RPG/Role Playing | GPU TEST

We tested The Old West: Northwood at the highest graphics settings, on video cards from the GEFORCE RTX and RADEON RX series. The Old West: Northwood has full support for Lumen technology on Unreal

gamegpu.tech

The fourth example comes from PugetSystems, who made a UE5.2 test scenario with Software Lumen and Hardware Lumen. Software Lumen is often 50% faster than Hardware Lumen on Ada and Ampere, while being 70% faster on RDNA3, meaning RDNA3 takes a bigger hit from Hardware Lumen.

Software:
RTX Quadro Ada: 70 fps
Radeon Pro W7900: 53 fps
RTX Quadro Ampere : 42 fps

Hardware:
RTX Quadro Ada: 45 fps
RTX Quadro Ampere : 31 fps
Radeon Pro W7900: 28 fps

AMD Radeon PRO W7800 and W7900 Content Creation Review

AMD's has released the Radeon PRO 7000 series of graphics cards featuring up to 48 GB of VRAM. How do they compare to NVIDIA's RTX Ampere and Ada GPUs?

www.pugetsystems.com

 

[cheapchips]

The first example is the game called "Satisfactory", featuring Software Lumen without Nanite, the game allows you to toggle Software Lumen off and on, and examine the performance.

Satisfactory does use Nanite for some landscape features. The factory components are still regular geometry/lods.

 

[milk]

I suppose using nanite assets makes software lumen more optimized.

 

[Inuhanyou]

Using non Nanite meshes with software lumen kind of takes away from the whole point.

 

[fehu]

Microsoft DX12 Agility SDK update to speed up GPU ML-applications and AV1 encoding - VideoCardz.com

Agility SDK update: Work Graphs, Wave Matrix, AV1 encoding Microsoft releases a preview of Agility SDK 1.711.3, which adds powerful tools for developers. Software developers will now be able to take advantage of work graphs, a function that will enable asynchronous shader utilization. This will...

videocardz.com

The potential of this technology has been outlined by Epic Games Unreal Engine 5 developers, who were among the biggest advocates of GPU generated workloads.

 

[Jofan]

Back in the forest again, this time with VR (SmartPoly Electric Dreams Demo: In real time RTX 4090, Oculus Quest II)
Really looks impressive when this close to the scenery, it looks life size. Incredible detail, makes you just want to reach out and touch it.

 

[cheapchips]

Chat a and a brief look at Norse, an Xcom style game from a team of 25.

They suffer a bit from 'low cost mocap hands' in some shots. Also, not a huge fan of their lighting choices for the gameplay snippets.

Talk about Nanite being a huge time saver in production is interesting.

 

[cheapchips]

"Motive is looking for an Audio Software Developer to join its Iron Man team using Unreal Engine 5" according to this job listing. Shame they're not using Frostbite. I was hoping for a Frostbite tech showcase. Oh well.

From the perspective of making an Iron Man game, UE5 is an interesting choice. Open world + superhero character who can fly hasn't been done well yet?

Développeur.euse de logiciel (Audio)/Software Developer (Audio) - IRON MAN at Electronic Arts

GR8 Job! at Electronic Arts

ea.gr8people.com

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Using non Nanite meshes with software lumen kind of takes away from the whole point.

To be clear, the Satisfactory devs made it very clear that they were just including it as an option to play around with from a visual perspective, but it is totally experimental and not something they directly plan to really "support" currently.

 

[Inuhanyou]

To be clear, the Satisfactory devs made it very clear that they were just including it as an option to play around with from a visual perspective, but it is totally experimental and not something they directly plan to really "support" currently.

Fair.

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Don't nod's Jusant was announced a couple of days back and it has a demo that's out on Steam. While it doesn't specify an Unreal version it most certainly seems to be 5+ as it seems to be using Nanite, Lumen and virtual shadow maps:

Cool demo, thanks for the link! Runs very well on my admittedly high end machine here. Looks nice for the most part. A bit of ghosting on moving shadows but otherwise pretty clean presentation. Neat to see the smooth, detailed geometry and sharp shadow lines actually work pretty well in this aesthetic.

 

[davis.anthony]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1673781975575048192

 

[milk]

Cool demo, thanks for the link! Runs very well on my admittedly high end machine here. Looks nice for the most part. A bit of ghosting on moving shadows but otherwise pretty clean presentation. Neat to see the smooth, detailed geometry and sharp shadow lines actually work pretty well in this aesthetic.

It looks excellent for most of the time, but its failure cases are significantly distracting as well.

The worst ofender, is a part where she enters a large big cave. The Lumen fails hard there at many instances. Significant light leeking around large depth discontinuities, and extreme light leaking and ghosting at fast disoclusion.

Lumen is in no way 100% production ready for AAA quality games at this state. Its close, but not all the way there. I imagine any AAA studio making games in UE5 right now, are making hand-placed work-arounds to reduce leaking in problematic areas such as that one, which kind of reduces the promise of real-time-everything and it-just-works...

Still an impressive and significant step in the direction of progress nonetheless. These sore-spots will be solved wventually, but it might take more time and effort than it seems. The whole law of 80-20 and all that.

 

[Dampf]

"In no way production ready" is a huge stretch for something 99% of gamers are not going to notice.

 

[trinibwoy]

"In no way production ready" is a huge stretch for something 99% of gamers are not going to notice.

Yeah there’s janky graphics and lighting all over the place that people don’t notice or care about.

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

The worst ofender, is a part where she enters a large big cave. The Lumen fails hard there at many instances. Significant light leeking around large depth discontinuities, and extreme light leaking and ghosting at fast disoclusion.

There's definitely areas for improvement but you may be over-emphasizing the state of what people consider deal-breakers. Have you tried the new Cyberpunk PT stuff for instance? There's a pretty obvious amount of disocclusion and general noise in that (as expected to be clear, but just to set a baseline) but yet it's not something I see most people complaining about much. The overall package looks good so it's not necessarily as distracting to the average user.

Personally I think it does need to get better, but the other subtlety is that it is a lot more baseline-performance-variable how objectionable it is in the first place. If you're doing significant upscaling and interpolating frames and all that you have a lot fewer samples to work with and things look worse, but if you're more in the 60+fps native with moderate (<2x) upscaling things tend to tighten up a lot more with these solutions.

There's also the "artifacts people are used to vs. the new ones" issue. In my personal role I get bugs filed against VSM issues that are frankly tiny and minor in comparison to the blatant CSM issues, but people are used to the old ones at this point. Conversely now that I'm used to seeing nanite-level geometry when I go back and play current games the jagged, low-poly geometry and lack of detailed shadows sticks out immediately.

That said I don't imagine the need for understanding the various tradeoffs and authoring appropriate content will ever entirely go away. Even if you still need to be aware of various things on the front I think the new systems make it significantly less overall work and easier than in the past to the point where even amateurs can make some pretty decent looking stuff. The expert stuff that has time to tweak will always be better though.

Anyways I'll have to go take a look back at the specific area you are referencing (I only played 20 minutes or so and mostly looked around at graphics during that) so I'm curious to take another look. If you happened to take a screenshot or video of the area that would help, otherwise hopefully it's as obvious as you are implying

 

[milk]

"In no way production ready" is a huge stretch for something 99% of gamers are not going to notice.

Yeah there’s janky graphics and lighting all over the place that people don’t notice or care about.

There's definitely areas for improvement but you may be over-emphasizing the state of what people consider deal-breakers.

The one area that I was talking about was where the player was in a a VERY dark cave, near pitch black, and the artifacts were random splotches of very bright outside lighting blinking up and then disapearing.

At the best case scenario, they were a small distraction. At the worst case, it might confuse the player into thinking there is some actual light emiting collectible or interactive character hiding around corners and the player will waste time looking for it. At some leves, that random strak of light could lead the player to think there was a cave opening in a place there isnt. Anyway, it kills the mood a bit.

Many players might not notice but I can't imagine a AAA dev not grinding their teeth at the sight of it during playtest. They will add hand-placed "no skylight/sunlight here" volumes around the level to add extra safeguards for lumen. I bet there are devs doing that right now.

When I get home, I'll screenshot those scenes.

EDIT: The offending section at 23:49

Inside the spoilers section I posted screencaps to point out what to look for, but the artifacts are more discernible when seen in motion.

Spoiler

Sure this is entirely unlike some of the most egregious ghosting we've seen when devs first started experimenting with temporal reprojection, but it is up there with the very worse offenders, and at points manages to out-do them, in a time when now most devs have been learing to reduce those artifacts. And unlike any previous ghosting artifact, it's not making colours from previous frames linger for the next few ones, but its CREATING NEW COLORS that were not in any frame. Its creating light where there shouldn't be, and revealing parts of the environment that should have been in darkness. It might be forgivable in many situations, and many game types. But for drama-rich, moody, single player, exploration base games, that is a deal breaker. A dev like ND (just an illustrative example) would never be ok with such artifacts showing up in a tense scene in a The Last of Us game. It breaks imersion too much,.

Again, it can probably be avoided with some artist-placed safeguards, but that will also mean lumen is not 100% real time in such games.

 

[davis.anthony]

Have you tried the new Cyberpunk PT stuff for instance? There's a pretty obvious amount of disocclusion and general noise in that (as expected to be clear, but just to set a baseline) but yet it's not something I see most people complaining about much.

That noise and fizzle pisses me of and annoys me so bad that I stopped playing with RT OD mode on.

 

[cheapchips]

A UE5 photography sim. Solo developer by the looks of it.

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

EDIT: The offending section at 23:49

Yeah that's fairly bad... not sure offhand why it would be happening. I'm guessing there's some pretty screwy Lumen scene representation happening there, perhaps with a malformed SDF from a monolithic object with too much concave portions. It looks like possibly only the screen space rays are "saving" it when it's not in motion.

Again, it can probably be avoided with some artist-placed safeguards, but that will also mean lumen is not 100% real time in such games.

I assume you mean "100% automatic/hands-off" rather than "real-time" here. To be clear, I don't think anyone is claiming that any of these new systems - including triangle raytracing - require zero art consideration. It's more that they significantly reduce the workload to the point that I would expect something like the above artifact could be fixed by a single person pretty easily, and probably without significant "hacks" like invisible light blockers or otherwise. Clearly something in the Lumen Scene there is screwy, and it's usually pretty easy to use the editor visualizations to track down what is going on in my experience. There's some discussion of various things to think about in this article for what it's worth: https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.2/en-US/lumen-technical-details-in-unreal-engine/

For the curious, Triangle RT generally has other issues more related to biasing near surfaces and LOD. In cases where other algorithms may break down in quality, it also often breaks down in performance, neither of which are acceptable for games so generally need to be addressed in content additionally. It's a good fit for cases like architecture with static planar surfaces and thin walls, but tends to completely break down in cases like foliage where it both performs terribly and provides a relatively poor approximation of the aggregate geometry.

I don't know whether Jusant is using HW (triangle RT) or SW Lumen, but judging from the pretty strong performance I would guess SW. Lots of static geometry though so definitely possible it is using HW RT on simplified geometry.