Live data from Hacker News

A first look at Unreal Engine 5

unrealengine.com

91–100 of 695 posts

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#91
post #15
post #8

In the past, I have always looked at Demos from Games and thought this is very good and getting close to movie quality. But that "close to" remained "close to" for quite some time. Even though It is improving every year but you can still tell it is gaming graphics. Even if some of the shots are not real time and pre rendered, they are still gaming like. That Unreal 5 Demo was the first time ever I thought this is Hol…

Well, I may be wrong, but I was under the impression that the Unreal Engine will also work on the next XBOX (and any PC) and that the PS5 was less powerfull than the next XBOX.

[deleted]

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#93

Wow, we'll soon be down to only one game engine. Crytek has financial worries. Plus it's the most difficult to use, because it's almost all C++. Unity is very accessible thanks to C# scripting, but has bug issues (and no source code). Unreal Engine looks amazing, is cheap or free for indie studios, and has source code included. If they can make UE slightly easier to develop for, they'll dominate the market.

Amazon is getting in the engine game as well, with Lumberyard. And there is always the possibility of other studios making their proprietary engine available if there is a profit opportunity. RAGE and Anvil come to mind.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#94
I have to wonder how much of this requires ray tracing hardware. I've noticed for many, many years that the quality of models and textures has been 'good enough', but lighting, for the most part, still sucked. Ray tracing seems to solve a lot of lighting problems.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#95
post #40

buried lede, perhaps: retroactive to Jan. 1, "Unreal Engine royalties waived on first $1 million in game revenue" > Unreal Engine End User License Agreement for Publishing: This license is free to use and incurs 5% royalties when you monetize your game or other interactive off-the-shelf product and your lifetime gross revenues from that product exceed $1,000,000 USD.

I’d be really curious to see what a talented programmer or two could do with the engine by themselves, without bringing an artist on board. Is the Unreal engine flexible enough to do low fidelity, 2D games or are you just better off coding up your own engine at that point?

"Low-fidelity", 2D does not mean no artist.

Pretty much every game needs someone talented in art or design. It can be one of the programmers, of course.

Unreal is not a good choice for a 2D game, anyway.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#96
The real-time GI is amazing. Ray tracing is going to be a game changer, not only in terms of visual quality, but also because it's one of those rare times in computer graphics where the more advanced solution is actually making it easier on graphics programmers by replacing a bag of dirty tricks with a unified, physically based solution.

One interesting note: they say the GI is "instant" but you can actually see that they are using temporal stabilization to achieve this effect, and there's a slight lag between when the light changes and when the GI finds its resting point. I suspect removing this lag will be one of the things which makes graphics feel "next gen" when GPUs can handle enough rays per pixel to handle GI in one or two frames instead of a few dozen.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#97
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to use C++, you have Blueprints, which can control not only shaders, but also game logic and levels.

If you're a programmer who wants to write code, you have to use C++

You can also use SkookumScript, although I wouldn't. Blueprints can also be compiled down to C++.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#98
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been done for ages in the audio production space, it's called "convolution reverb". It's quite nice, but it doesn't allow you to tune it very much, besides basic filtering and stretching/cutting.

Yah, they said "convolution reverb," so I think they expected audience to know what it was. Often it's not about creating new technology, but making existing technology accessible to new audiences and new creators.

Honestly, convolution reverb is already highly accessible. It’s a feature in $50 (and probably free) reverb plug-ins for anybody that does audio. They’re relatively easy to implement and have probably been around for a decade+. As the OP said, the audio things they mentioned aren’t new or adding any accessibility imo

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#99
post #8

In the past, I have always looked at Demos from Games and thought this is very good and getting close to movie quality. But that "close to" remained "close to" for quite some time. Even though It is improving every year but you can still tell it is gaming graphics. Even if some of the shots are not real time and pre rendered, they are still gaming like. That Unreal 5 Demo was the first time ever I thought this is Hol…

the water effects just after the four minute mark looked odd. while the fixed assets like the statues and such later on looked great. however I kept going back to the water and questioning some of the lighting effects too. don't get me wrong, the fixed assets look amazing and I look forward to seeing more done with this system

Water, dust, cloth and hair physics are all still in the uncanny valley...not to take away from the tremendous progress with triangles and lighting!
Post reply on HN