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A first look at Unreal Engine 5

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Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#141

Post by davidhyde »

driverdan wrote: post #64
ksec wrote: 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…

Keep in mind it's contending with YouTube compression too. A lot of the artifacts you see around the character and other moving objects are likely compression artifacts.

The video was hosted on Vimeo which is generally less aggressive with quality and banding but this is still a good point.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#142

Post by _bxg1 »

olavgg wrote: post #132
_bxg1 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to figure out whether the new GI used raytracing, and it doesn't seem like it is? If it is using raytracing hardware it isn't nearly as impressive. If it isn't , then it's sheer magic.

Shadows are too sharp, so I don't think they use raytracing.

It certainly isn't completely raytraced, because current hardware can't support that. If they use the new hardware, they're using it in some kind of mixed mode. Whether that means only for certain materials, or whether they're able to use it to do "fat rays" that approximate only the general direction for indirect light, or whatever else. But direct, hard shadows are quite cheap (comparatively) on today's regular, rasterization-based rendering systems, so that part isn't surprising.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#143

Post by vmception »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #138
vmception wrote: post #89

so PC gamers, with 8K textures and UE5, what would you like to see aside from pushed framerates?

Better physics. It's 2020 and still doors, walls, and even windows can be struck by a rocket without anything other than a scorch decal left behind.

there have been a couple games over the decades that do this well, I too am surprised how this isn't built right into the engines for everyone to independently opt for doing that

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#144

Post by skohan »

olavgg wrote: post #132
_bxg1 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to figure out whether the new GI used raytracing, and it doesn't seem like it is? If it is using raytracing hardware it isn't nearly as impressive. If it isn't , then it's sheer magic.

Shadows are too sharp, so I don't think they use raytracing.

Why would sharp shadows rule out raytracing? And how would they achieve this quality of GI without it?

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#145

Post by flipgimble »

Let me throw in an anecdote that may amuse some: I was working for a now defunct large game company when Epic and Tim Sweeny came in to demo Unreal Engine 3 very early before the PS3 and XBox360 were launched. This was about 2004. Their demo blew away executives in particular. They showed multicolored lights casting multicolored shadows on a single high detail character. One of the lights was behind a stained glass window, projecting beautiful patterns. Soon after a deal was signed to use the engine throughout the entire studio. In retrospect that was a good decision and I have a lot of respect for Unreal Engine and Epic in general.

Edit: found the video of the demo levels that shipped with very early UE3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m7T5ay_8DI

However UE3-generation games that finally shipped had none of the visual effects from the early demos. The multicolored shadows could only be rendered with multiple passes, at least one per light, which proved to be too expensive for larger dynamic game scenes. It took years of work from the demo to shipped games, and an army of unnamed engineers to wrestle the technology into a product.

UE4 had a great early demo of dynamic global illumination using something like voxel cone tracing if I remember correctly. To my knowledge that tech demo was never incorporated into the engine and never shipped.

Epic is famous for their demos, and I love them for it... at least now that I no longer work professionally in that field. If anything it charts a long term technical direction for interactive entertainment.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#146

Post by vmception »

ebg13 wrote: post #114
vmception wrote: post #89

so PC gamers, with 8K textures and UE5, what would you like to see aside from pushed framerates?

My #1 desire for the future of game graphics is universal support for foveated rendering.

why do you want that, out of curiosity. The description seems to mimic human eye and reduce load on rendering processor, but it seems like less information for the player at once

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#147

Post by uryga »

rowanG077 wrote: post #113
skohan wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It remains to be seen how the PS5 and the new XBox compare in terms of performance. The specs of the new XBox are slightly higher on paper, but the PS5 is doing some really interesting things in terms of optimization. Basically the XBox is going for high constant clock speeds, and the PS5 is shifting priority between the CPU and GPU components of the SOC so each gets boosted performance when it's most relevant. Both…

Highly dangerous of the PS people to build non-deterministic performance into their console. Developers who try to push every ounce of power out of it will hate it. edit: Maybe deterministic isn't the correct word. What I mean is that you can design a physics system that you can ensure runs on the PS5 CPU. But then the graphics boys make an upgrade and suddenly some power is diverted to the graphics and the physics s…

does it have to be non-deterministic? couldn't they add an option to hint which should be prioritized? maybe

  hint_prioritize_cpu_begin()
  ...
  hint_prioritize_cpu_end()
or something?

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#148

Post by Mirioron »

robmerki wrote: post #24

I am always skeptical of tech demos like this, but if Epic has truly created a way to show full quality assets at runtime without manual LOD / optimization, then this is going to be a huge process improvement for game development. Same goes for this lighting. Baking lights is such a burden, if they can simply do all of this at runtime then making beautiful games just became that much easier. They also bought Quixel,…

I think it remains to be seen. Unity's big upcoming feature seems to what they call the Data Oriented Technology Stack. Essentially, this supposedly allows you to put far more non-static objects onto the screen than is usually available in a game engine. I do agree though that what Epic's doing here is a huge deal.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#149

Post by robotdongs »

explorigin wrote: post #111
bt1a wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the scarf movement looked great.

Not to me. It was too stiff which caused it to move in some unnatural ways.

It didn’t seem to reflect well the way cloth moves when sliding across another piece of cloth. When she was climbing, I’d expect the scarf to sort of wrinkle/bunch up, then fall to her side, not just cleanly slide off.

However I could see them adjusting the physics for the demo to ensure the cloth actually fell by her side so we could see it swaying as she climbed.

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