I can’t even display the full thread title on a 4k screen. :D
Cool shots from someone on twitter.
Seems like you could play a game of “photograph or Matrix Awakens tech demo?” (Okay, maybe hide the images after 3 seconds to handicap it a bit.)
Those screenshots make me realize that this thing looks worse in motion. Not that it looks bad, it’s just less convincing for the most part, at least in the open world section.
The city comprises seven million instanced assets, made up of millions of polygons each. There are seven thousand buildings made of thousands of modular pieces, 45,073 parked cars (of which 38,146 are drivable), over 260 km of roads, 512 km of sidewalk, 1,248 intersections, 27,848 lamp posts, and 12,422 manholes. Nanite intelligently streams and processes those billions of polygons, rendering everything at film quality, super fast.
literally unplayable
I watched the clip and realised the city is too clean. There are no potholes, no random debris on the streets. The faces are again too smooth, like photoshop smooth. No blemish or mole.
Graffiti looks artificial, like someone spraying it halfheartedly. Graffiti in particular in close up is physics defying. If it is sprayed onto the plastic cover behind the chainlink fence, then some of the spray must have been caught by the fence. In the photo there isn’t any spill on the fence.
The general point is that on close up it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. There is not enough imperfection to make it real. It is quite possible these imperfections can be procedurally generated in the future in real time though.
It’s a tech demo. The thing to admire is the tech, not the city.
The big difference to me is that twice now I’ve gotten to a shock of not knowing if I was looking at a real photograph or something in a game. First was some scenes in Forza Horizon 5, and now some scenes in this Matrix tech demo. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, as one always does with a new generation of graphical fidelity, but man, what a cool feeling. I was almost there with Microsoft Flight Simulator, but not quite. For me to feel that, I need to look at screenshots of that game that other people took at higher resolution, it never happens to me on my 1080p monitor within the game. For Forza Horizon 5 and Matrix Awakens, it happened to me even on my 1080p monitor, which is quite something.
Really? Loads better? This is easily the best showcase I’ve seen on current-gen.
For hard surface modeling and material technical excellence, sure. For soft body modeling, foliage, a consistent appealing aesthetic, and directed lighting, most games are going to blow it out of the water.
I’m not the target audience, I guess. A tech demo has limited appeal to me; I want to see what an actual game looks like, preferably one that has artists directing the visual experience.
There was another UE5 demo last year with a more traditional gaming environment running through caves, giant cliffs, ancient temples, etc. It looked spectacular too.
One of the interesting things in the DF video is they said they’re still developing the UE5… uh, whatever you call the stuff like Nanite, I guess tools? They’re shoring up the weaknesses. Which I suppose should be obvious, but it seems like if they’re leaning on these magic tools and features that they’ll want to keep improving them.
I’m about the furthest removed from an Epic fanboy. I just thought it was a really neat shiny.
Most revolutionary thing about it that chainlink fenced is actually modeled and isn’t just a texture.
I didn’t find the chain link fence when I was roaming around the city. When Digital Foundry mentioned it, I was really glad that I didn’t unintall the tech demo yet. I’ll have to go back in and find the real chain link fence. I didn’t think that was possible yet.
I was looking at the doors in the city. Some of them have padlocks which are actually modelled and extruding from the doors. So that’s new to me.
As far as I know, UE5 isn’t even officially out yet and is just in some kind of beta period so I don’t think there should be an expectation that they consider any of these features totally done. I’m also sure that if these are the breakout technologies they look to be that Epic will continue to enhance and refine them for years.
UE5 has a couple of really neat features.
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“Lumen” is basically ray-traced global illumination and reflections, including emissive materials, on by default. This is a huge improvement to perception of reality. These games will look more compelling, more real, like the Metro Exodus rebuild.
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“Nanite” is essentially black magic, allowing for vastly more complex scenes without distractingly switching level of detail as the player camera moves. No more normal maps, you just push out the polygons. Huge change, if it isn’t bullshit.
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“Temporal Super Resolution” is basically DLSS for UE5 only, it’s what makes this level of fidelity possible on current-gen consoles, by reconstructing a much lower-resolution image.
I think this Matrix tech demo shows pretty conclusively that it isn’t bullshit. Saw this running on my very own PS5 and the detail up close and far off was impressive with no visible pop-in.
Yep no noticeable LoD pop-in in the demo. Remains to be seen how the tech demo translates to actual games, but UE5 is incredibly promising. Not just an evolution of UE4.