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

Without commenting on the CB2077 vs R&C discussion (i think they have such differing art styles and scopes that they are difficult to compare), I just want to say that I don't think high detail models are a good bellwether for whether something is last gen or current gen. Model quality within games will vary vastly depending on the scope of the game. Car models in the latest PS4 GT game for example would be far more detailed than those in GTA5, and perhaps even beat out those in GTA 6. The lead character models in say Uncharted 4 may well be more detailed than the NPC's in GTA6 and so on...

Potentially streaming would allow piperun assets to be used in open world games. Like ratchet&clank removing stuff behind camera and using all ram to render visible things. UE5 is good example of this as they claim they can use source level assets and do lod dynamically. Storage space becomes bigger problem than bandwidth needed to stream. Who is going to make first game taking more than 1TB space?
 
LODs in GTA V and their polygon count
The game's original car models from R* have, depending on their amount of details, roughly the following polygon counts:

L0: 50k - 60k
L1: 10k - 20k
L2: 6.000 - 11k
L3: 2.500 - 7.000
L4: 300 - 900

sure they are less detailed than in GTS, but the point is in their respective genre, polycount still goes up from generation to another, ratcher model is way higher model on PS5 thant it is on PS4. that's the point. CP2077 could use higher models on PC than on PS4 for sure, but devs chose not to, either by not having enough time or ressources. That's why i consider CP2007 still last gen in that departement, not talking about res/framerate and RT:effects of course.
 
LODs in GTA V and their polygon count
The game's original car models from R* have, depending on their amount of details, roughly the following polygon counts:

L0: 50k - 60k
L1: 10k - 20k
L2: 6.000 - 11k
L3: 2.500 - 7.000
L4: 300 - 900

It's interesting how Nanite changes this. Pick on the statue:

Original Asset: 33m (but due to the way Nanite works can be used in the level designer, it runs find, no one cares that it's huge)
Shipped asset: Squished to 1m as who'll notice 33m in game
Display LOD: Always just what's needed

Worth reminding that a 1m poly Nanite object is equal to a 4k normal map in size. A game at current sizes can have loads of these objects. Guess there's still a limit when you throw in textures on top. I'm sure there's scope to get into trouble with storage budget but doesn't sound like it's going to be that limiting when it comes to making high detail, varied environments.
 
It's interesting how Nanite changes this. Pick on the statue

I'm still waiting for clarity on the overhead. Nothing in tech is free. What we are used to as LOD complexity now is something that will be served, presumably, by Epic's nanite framework. Unless all the work is done at assets creation (which is likely to inflate the size of individual assets) some work surely has to be done at runtime?

I've not watched the Unreal 5 presentation since it was first released so I may be forgetting some explanation as to how all this magic works. But Epic have a bit of a reputation for over-selling their engine capabilities when it coms to what can be achieve in actual games.
 
Without commenting on the CB2077 vs R&C discussion (i think they have such differing art styles and scopes that they are difficult to compare), I just want to say that I don't think high detail models are a good bellwether for whether something is last gen or current gen. Model quality within games will vary vastly depending on the scope of the game. Car models in the latest PS4 GT game for example would be far more detailed than those in GTA5, and perhaps even beat out those in GTA 6. The lead character models in say Uncharted 4 may well be more detailed than the NPC's in GTA6 and so on...

The fact is that the model detail show in Rifts Apart would be possible on the PS4 if you were to "scale back the effects" to more of a last gen level. Sure the resolution and framerate might be terrible and the texture resolution would have to be cut back to save on memory as well as perhaps reducing the number of objects/characters on screen at any given time, but the models themselves aren't impossible for last gen.

The gap between Ratchet PS4 and PS5 is huge. Here it is the PS5 version at 60 fps in the video. The models, texture, PBR shading, ligthing, density and vegetation are much better on Ratchet Rift Apart and Ratchet 2016 level are very empty.


Ratchet PS4 and see the video you can find worse place. I took the best image I find of R&C. The fight against the flying octopus in R&C PS4 look outdated into the comparative video against Ratchet and clank Rift Apart.

Ratchet and Clank PS4
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R&C Rift Apart, the gap is huge

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The gap between Ratchet PS4 and PS5 is huge.

I never suggested for a moment that it wasn't.

My post was stating that model quality in isolation (from things like genre, resolution, framerate, density of models, quality of lighting etc...) is not indicative of whether a game is last gen or current gen.
 
I'm still waiting for clarity on the overhead. Nothing in tech is free. What we are used to as LOD complexity now is something that will be served, presumably, by Epic's nanite framework. Unless all the work is done at assets creation (which is likely to inflate the size of individual assets) some work surely has to be done at runtime?

I've not watched the Unreal 5 presentation since it was first released so I may be forgetting some explanation as to how all this magic works. But Epic have a bit of a reputation for over-selling their engine capabilities when it coms to what can be achieve in actual games.

Yeah, we'll see, but it feel like a different situation that the UE4 demo.

This presentation had more detail than the initial one, including how they built the art pipeline for it.


They haven't said how Nanite actually works, but it originated with Brian Thingybob's work with geometry textures and evolved from there. They have said Nanite currently works within about 4.5ms (presumably on PS5) and ~750Mb ram. They are selling it as being able to have 100,000s of objects based on source assets with millions of polygons. If it's still anything like geometry textures, it's looking up the appropriate mip levels for objects and generating that 1 poly per pixel from them.

There's something going on with occlusion as well. They've talk about the opening cave in the demo just being made of objects layered on each other and not having to worry about stuff that's no longer visible.

Edit: changed 8ms to 4.5ms
 
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Yeah, we'll see, but it feel like a different situation that the UE4 demo.

This presentation had more detail than the initial one, including how they built the art pipeline for it.


They haven't said how Nanite actually works, but it originated with Brian Thingybob's work with geometry textures and evolved from there. They have said Nanite currently works within about 8ms (presumably on PS5) and ~750Mb ram. They are selling it as being able to have 100,000s of objects based on source assets with millions of polygons. If it's still anything like geometry textures, it's looking up the appropriate mip levels for objects and generating that 1 poly per pixel from them.

There's something going on with occlusion as well. They've talk about the opening cave in the demo just being made of objects layered on each other and not having to worry about stuff that's no longer visible.

No Nanite was working at 4.5 ms and it as less than this when Brian Karis commented about the demo. Nanite can easily feat in a 60 fps the demo was 30 fsps because of Lumen.

Currently the demo is only available with PS5 devkit

EDIT: Some little reminder of what they have share

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I never suggested for a moment that it wasn't.

My post was stating that model quality in isolation (from things like genre, resolution, framerate, density of models, quality of lighting etc...) is not indicative of whether a game is last gen or current gen.

rock model is much better on R&C Rift Apart than on R&C 2014.

This is some R&C 2016 gameplay

7Nsqv1F.png


coming from this video and it shows the gap is fucking huge even taking into account detail of each assets


I don't think rock model are comparable to this

IG6yrP.png


And a little remider of the detail in the UE 5 demo

bastian-hoppe-artstation-bh-05.jpg



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It's such a pity to spoil the high quality assets with grain filter and DOF in Ratchet. I think with proper settings the details will look even better up close.
 
Craziest thing about that unreal5 demo is that it was run on a preproduction ps5 over year ago. One has to wonder how much progress epic has done and how much the hw side has matured since(console os, directstorage for pc).
 
Craziest thing about that unreal5 demo is that it was run on a preproduction ps5 over year ago. One has to wonder how much progress epic has done and how much the hw side has matured since(console os, directstorage for pc).

Bastian Hope a senior artist at Epic. I am curious if they reach the target of the demo with the same quality but at 60 fps on PS5.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/nYEDvE

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rock model is much better on R&C Rift Apart than on R&C 2014.

This is some R&C 2016 gameplay

coming from this video and it shows the gap is fucking huge even taking into account detail of each assets

I don't understand what argument you think we're having here. I've already told you I'm not in any way suggesting R&C Rift Apart and R&C 2014 are comparable so why do you keep posting comparison screenshots and video's at me?

Once again, my point was that model quality alone when taken in isolation does not determine whether a game is current or last gen. You could take the R&C Rift Apart models, put them in a PS4 side on fighting game at 900p/20fps with last gen effects and it wouldn't suddenly make that game a next generation game, or conversely wouldn't make Rift Apart a last gen game because the PS4 was using the same models.
 
One has to wonder how something like test drive/gran turismo/... could look if it was implemented using unreal5. Or at least using similar streaming technologies as r&c is using. Maybe disk space permitting it would be possible to scan the tracks and use near source level material when gaming.
 
I don't understand what argument you think we're having here. I've already told you I'm not in any way suggesting R&C Rift Apart and R&C 2014 are comparable so why do you keep posting comparison screenshots and video's at me?

Once again, my point was that model quality alone when taken in isolation does not determine whether a game is current or last gen. You could take the R&C Rift Apart models, put them in a PS4 side on fighting game at 900p/20fps with last gen effects and it wouldn't suddenly make that game a next generation game, or conversely wouldn't make Rift Apart a last gen game because the PS4 was using the same models.

Geometry and texture resolution are part of the definition of a gen. It was always the case. Here we compare two R&C games and the geometry and texture are part of the next gen effect and not only on character but on scenery. Everything is more detailed.

From PS1 to PS2 to PS3 to PS4 and now PS5 geometry and texture resolution go up, same from og Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One and Xbox Series. In one of R&C preview artist explained they asked to programmer what polygon density they can use and same for texel density like every gen and they were surprised by the result and because it was much less constrained by RAM because of the SSD.
 
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Were long ways off from having that generational jump the previous consoles offered. We'd be needing 20+TF of gpus with alot more capable ray tracing hardware for that to happen.
 
Were long ways off from having that generational jump the previous consoles offered. We'd be needing 20+TF of gpus with alot more capable ray tracing hardware for that to happen.
The point of this technology is to achieve far greater results without the need for a much faster GPU.
 
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