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

[Recop]

Why are there constant guesses as to why this demo is specialised for only one piece of hardware?

To be fair, there's a marketing deal between Sony and Epic. So there's a small tension between pleasing Sony and calling back to everyone their core business is to make technologies working on every platform.

That being said, some engines could work better on some consoles, but it's trivial and like in any generation.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why are there constant guesses as to why this demo is specialised for only one piece of hardware.

It's a valid consideration. We know PS5 has a storage solution presently unparalleled, so the question arises how tuned this demo is for that storage or not. That doesn't mean the engine/demo cannot scale to other platforms, just that people are questioning the role of storage speed, especially after Epic identified the storage as part of what's enabled this tech.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

To be fair, there's a marketing deal between Sony and Epic.

No-one has presented any evidence of that yet. If it's true, it needs a link and qualification (what exactly is the deal for). If it's just a rumour, please leave it out of this discussion and assume Epic are saying what Epic want to say; when they say an SSD is needed, we should take that as a part of the tech.

 

[Recop]

No-one has presented any evidence of that yet. If it's true, it needs a link and qualification (what exactly is the deal for). If it's just a rumour, please leave it out of this discussion and assume Epic are saying what Epic want to say; when they say an SSD is needed, we should take that as a part of the tech.

I only meant for the demo, unless you think Epic deliberately chose the PS5 to show their work ? It's highly unlikely...

 

[j^aws]

I only meant for the demo, unless you think Epic deliberately chose the PS5 to show their work ? It's highly unlikely...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1261845845978341377

Let's leave all this marketing nonsense behind and focus on this amazing tech that's coming to many devices.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

We don't know that there was an official marketing agreement. Leveraging the PS5 was clearly a smart move. It's possibly the base, but we shouldn't really care, and just talk about the platforms shown and talked about thus far.

 

[Deleted member 7537]

I only meant for the demo, unless you think Epic deliberately choose the PS5 to show their work ? It's highly unlikely...

Unreal 3 was shown at the PS3 reveal, Unreal 4 was shown at the PS4 reveal and Unreal 5 is being shown during the PS5 reveal period. Maybe it's a long standing relationship. Like between Sony and Rockstar, it doesn't have to incorporate any special deal.

Anyway, the whole situation is as foolish as it can get:
- Epic never said the demo would never run on a PC or on any other hardware.
- They actually specifically mention PC, Mobile Devices and XBOX SX, as well as current generation devices.
- Epic licenses UE. They are not going to put effort and money on a tech that only works on specialized hardware.
- Epic did say that PS5s SSD solution is faster than what you can find on current top end PCs (true) and that the console is well balanced (tbd).

I though this was clear from the beginning, but Epic decided to show this on PS5 and a lot of people on the internet were mad because:
a. it wasn't shown on the hardware they support.
b. they didn't like it looked that good on PS5 .

Well, thankfully console wars wind down after release and people will stop harassing Tim Sweeney over twitter soon.

 

[patsu]

Epic Team commented on Twitter the squeeze Segment only exists to Show how dense the meshes and textures are up close - it has nothing to do with loading.

Why are there constant guesses as to why this demo is specialised for only one piece of hardware? Epic makes multiplatform Engines.the most radically interesting Part of the Demo is Software rasterised triangles and amazing LOD, which is something completely different than before.

I saw that explanation for PS5. But at the same time, it is also true that such constrict point is commonly used for slowing down the player to help loading/memory for lesser platforms. That flexibility is part of the reasons why that demo can be used for multi-platform demo.

 

[Karamazov]

the purpose was to make noise of course, see their most viewed video on their youtube channel before UE5, it was infiltrator 7 years ago and it's "only" 2,1M views
Showing it on PS5 brought a lot of views and talking everywhere.
Really smart, and well deserved.

 

[Recop]

Unreal 3 was shown at the PS3 reveal, Unreal 4 was shown at the PS4 reveal and Unreal 5 is being shown during the PS5 reveal period. Maybe it's a long standing relationship. Like between Sony and Rockstar, it doesn't have to incorporate any special deal.

But business doesn't work like that. You don't give free advantages like that.

This enormous publicity they gave to Sony was certainly not free.

I mean either because Sony offered them a specific support or whatever, but i really doubt they chose to show their work on PS5 specially for its hardware : this is my point.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Can we PLEASE stop talking platforms and marketing!! It really doesn't bloody matter. UE5 is a cross-platform engine and we all know that. The discussion should be about what Epic are doing and the system resources needed to pull it off.

 

[Dictator]

No-one has presented any evidence of that yet. If it's true, it needs a link and qualification (what exactly is the deal for). If it's just a rumour, please leave it out of this discussion and assume Epic are saying what Epic want to say; when they say an SSD is needed, we should take that as a part of the tech.

I do not think it is reasonable to imagine the Demo of a mutliplatform engine trying to advertise its use for developers is going to have tech that only works on one platform and then also target the exact slowest subcomponent in computing. Targetting storage as the main scaling factor in performance would mean the engine would scale terrible over time and across different Devices in a similar memory Configuration (which is what they are trying to sell to). Think about it like this: epic is trying to convince developers before the gen starts to use their engine, they are not going to Design it to be useless for console mutliplatform projects. PC is fine of course as more memory just offsets storage bandwidth in the cases were steaming is constant on consoles.

I really think if the discussion focused less on the necessity of comparing the consoles, the more radically interesting Part of the Demonstration is obvious. How nanite even functions, what it applies to, what it could be extended to in the future, etc.

 

[Karamazov]

it has to work on a variety of devices, but that does not mean it can't take advantage of each device's strenght.
So it could take advantage of extra GPU power of the XsX, but could not take advantage of PS5 SSD/IO solution/Speed ?
Non sense.

 

[PSman1700]

PC is fine of course as more memory just offsets storage bandwidth in the cases were steaming is constant on consoles.

Yes, and the nature of evolving hardware offcourse. This summer/end of the year there's drives that do 7gb/s, and i guess further on, hardware only improves, and so does the software side.

it has to work on a variety of devices, but that does not mean it can't take advantage of each device's strenght.
So it could take advantage of extra CPU power of the XsX, but could not take advantage of PS5 SSD/IO solution/Speed ?

Someone correct me this, but isn't the demo shown very compute heavy, with the way rendering and GI/tracing is done? At the same time, when flying, drive speed comes in handy. Also, how important is bandwith when doing something crazy like that?

 

[Recop]

it has to work on a variety of devices, but that does not mean it can't take advantage of each device's strenght.
So it could take advantage of extra GPU power of the XsX, but could not take advantage of PS5 SSD/IO solution/Speed ?
Non sense.

You're right, but it's more a matter of what you choose to do with the engine actually. Also, any engine could take advantage of a faster particular piece of hardware.

Basically, more of something is always better in any situation.

 

[Dictator]

it has to work on a variety of devices, but that does not mean it can't take advantage of each device's strenght.
So it could take advantage of extra GPU power of the XsX, but could not take advantage of PS5 SSD/IO solution/Speed ?
Non sense.

Any multiplatform engine can have the dials turned for variables to make it more memory bound, CPU cound, GPU bound on different Devices. That is not what I argued at all in the Text of my post.

If we take a look at the Demo there are many aspects that outwardly speak against it being memory bound even, like the incredible amount of instancing. Many scenes are filled with the same objects just instnaced many times over, like rocks, Statues, vases, pottery, plants, etc. Yet the core assumption in the discussion where we still have no outward evidence regarding the memory usage of the Demo is to talk about why one System's i/o Performance is the Thing that made it possible?

That seems like a lot of hoops to jump through with little evidence unlike the other more obvious evidential things to talk about, like nanite's functioning, lumen's strengths and weaknesses, etc.

We have Information on those things.Yet people keep wanting to talk about console differences there is no evidence for...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I do not think it is reasonable to imagine the Demo of a mutliplatform engine trying to advertise its use for developers is going to have tech that only works on one platform and then also target the exact slowest subcomponent in computing.

Who's saying otherwise? Of course the tech works on other platforms. The only area of interest is whether amount of detail or some other aspect is enabled through PS5's SSD or if that has zero baring on the specifics of the demo.

I really think if the discussion focused less on the necessity of comparing the consoles, the more radically interesting Part of the Demonstration is obvious. How nanite even functions, what it applies to, what it could be extended to in the future, etc.

Exactly. Fast storage is a feature of Nanite and that part should be discussed without people trying to claim any one platform is superior to another. The brand on the showcased platform is immaterial - the only points of interest are 10 TF ish of RDNA 2 architecture and a very fast SSD system.

In fact, that's so key I'm going to Mod-embolden it.

The brand on the showcased platform is immaterial - the only points of interest are 10 TF ish of RDNA 2 architecture and a very fast SSD system.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I think its because of Tim keep mentioning the SSD and how the demo would not be possible without sonys SSD advancements and IO tech which is the reason why tim keeps saying thats why they built this demo for ps5 instead of high end pc or xbox like youd expect them to.

I think that is confusing people into thinking this demo is doing something specifically with sonys SSD that cant be replicated without some kind of compromise somewhere even if you could get a similar scene going at slightly different settings or whatever.

But like alex says...this is a third party engine designed to work everywhere. Even low end machines like current gen machines and switch just like ue4.

Without a doubt there will be things playstation 5 exclusives can use that SSD for pushing the boat out in certain ways, but this demo was clearly something to demonstrate their engine tech, not to show off the best of the ps5s unique points.

Not gonna go anywhere near so far as to say epic and sweeny are playing a cynical marketing game with sony paying them off to say nice things like some people around the net are suggesting, but what the engine shows are things that are possible on a variety of devices not just PS5. Maybe epic are just more excited at the general possibilities of sonys architecture to talk about it like they have.

 

[Pinstripe]

But like alex says...this is a third party engine designed to work everywhere. Even low end machines like current gen machines and switch just like ue4.

Current-gen consoles? Switch (lol)? Most certainly not. For that you have UE4.

For UE5 they have drawn a line in the sand to leverage newer hardware architectures. What's the point otherwise?

 

[Inuhanyou]

Current-gen consoles? Switch (lol)? Most certainly not. For that you have UE4.

For UE5 they have drawn a line in the sand to leverage newer hardware architectures. What's the point otherwise?

Did you not hear? They want people transition from ue4 fast for a unified dev enviorment. So yes...not at anywhere near this level of fidelity but the tech is designed to scale from phones to movie sets. And current gen machines (yes even base xb1 and ps4) are still much stronger than phones. In that way Switch may get the barest of bare bones conversions but its also possible there too.