A first look at Unreal Engine 5 • Hacker News Board

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#401

Post by vasili111 » Wed, May 13, 2020, 8:28 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #365

vasili111 wrote: post #360

All this for sure looks amazing. But I do not think it will bring anything new to gameplay. There is no big gameplay changes in past 15 years. All shooters, all MMORPG, all strategy games and etc are based on the ideas of 2003-2005 years. Graphics are improving but most games have similar gameplay. I think the biggest next impact to gameplay and game industry will be engine that will be able to have huge zoom ability…

This ignores AR, VR, and other recent genres. We just had No Man's Sky come out doing exactly what you describe. Other procedural infinite space games exist.

> This ignores AR, VR, and other recent genres.

They sounded promising but they did not made actual revolution in games. They are not mass product used by most players.

> No Man's Sky come out doing exactly what you describe. Other procedural infinite space games exist.

I said "able to have huge zoom ability + ability to handle more than 30 000 players on the same map". There are no games that have those both at the same time. Only those 2 in one game is what I am saying.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#402

Post by simias » Wed, May 13, 2020, 8:29 PM UTC

hombre_fatal wrote: post #175

simias wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding a bit negative I personally find that graphics have plateaued since about the PS3. Sure, there are more polys, sure, there are higher res textures, sure, there are more complex and dynamic lights. But you don't really have the kind of gap we used to have between, say, the PS1 and PS2 for instance. Diminishing returns and all that. The problem is that, in my experience, this eye candy only matt…

Your only commentary here is that it doesn't live up to your expectations. You wanted more. And then you wonder why AAA studios focus on graphics? > That being said I concede that I'm clearly in the minority You definitely aren't in the minority. r/gaming is full of people racing to be most unimpressed by a good looking game. All the HN comments pointing out flaws with "don't get me wrong, it looks decent!" could be…

I must have expressed myself poorly, my point was not that I don't think it looks good, my point is that I feel like all this effort is focused on a single metric, making stuff look good in trailers.

Remember when HL2 was announced you had this super fancy physics engine? How objects would bounce and realistic react with each other, how you could stack things and come up with puzzles that would just use the physics engine without hardcoded scripts? HL2 was gorgeous looking but it was more than bump-mapping and complicated light models. You couldn't port HL2 to goldsrc and have it play the same.

Meanwhile almost 2 decades later we're back to fully scripted puzzles, mostly non-interactive environments and AI that's generally limited to a glorified A* algorithm.

This tech demo doesn't look decent, it looks really good, there's no arguing about it.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#403

Post by Razengan » Wed, May 13, 2020, 8:33 PM UTC

Wesxdz wrote: post #385

Razengan wrote: post #297

Graphics tech has been good enough for a while. I wish developers would start giving more love to improving other areas like physics, AI, and speech synthesis, that can make a game actually feel and play more realistic than just eye candy would. But I guess those other technologies depend more on the CPU/RAM etc. which consoles lack in, so they don't want to bother with that. Here's an example of how games have actua…

Woah! The AI and physics in Far Cry 2 is an order of magnitude better. It makes me wonder how the games regressed to be so bad (maybe devs just don't care as much anymore?), given that Dunia Engine is used by both games. 'the game's director, Clint Hocking, noted that internally, much of the design of Far Cry 2 was haphazard'

> It makes me wonder how the games regressed to be so bad (maybe devs just don't care as much anymore?)

Console limitations might be one reason. Apparently everything has to run on every platform under the sun or you might die impoverished in a dark alley, a mindset that has inflicted other horrors, like Electron, upon us.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#404

Post by ygra » Wed, May 13, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

jl6 wrote: post #247

basch wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of what/why they are doing it this way, is realistic lighting and reflections. Im not sure the difference between a realtime game engine and ray tracing matters that much when you are using it as faux ambient light. After it is filmed, they can still go back and touchup the backgrounds. Someday with ray tracing they can do real time finished products, but for now the tech works great at what its intended to do.

If a scene has been filmed in this setup, how easy is it to separate the physical foreground from the background screen if they want to re-composite the foreground with a more detailed rey traced background?

The system allows you to insert a dynamic greenscreen around a foreground element (while also retaining the option to preview how things will look after everything). So you can retain most of the virtual set for reflections and lighting, while still having a greenscreen.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#405

Post by antonios » Wed, May 13, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

Priem19 wrote: post #400

While this is completely amazing, a caveat: graphics are way less important than we think it is. I still remember every nook and cranny from Tomb Raider 3's jungle level, and when I think about it I imagine being deep inside a real jungle. It didn't matter that everything looked jagged; my imagination could go wild. This is probably a flawed opinion, but sometimes I think the more realistic games become, the less wor…

Exactly why I find good roguelikes to offer the most immersive gaming experiences. Just the input you need to let your imagination go wild. But not many friends share that sentiment, unfortunately.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#406

Post by hutzlibu » Wed, May 13, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

Priem19 wrote: post #400

While this is completely amazing, a caveat: graphics are way less important than we think it is. I still remember every nook and cranny from Tomb Raider 3's jungle level, and when I think about it I imagine being deep inside a real jungle. It didn't matter that everything looked jagged; my imagination could go wild. This is probably a flawed opinion, but sometimes I think the more realistic games become, the less wor…

Yeah, when all graphic is blocky, your imagination does the rest. But when you have blocky graphics together with shining water animation like in Morrowind (I think) it breaks immersion.

Still though, that demo was impressive (even though there were maybe some tiny things not perfectly balanced with the shining other effect)

I want to play games that look like that, now.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#407

Post by JorgeGT » Wed, May 13, 2020, 8:40 PM UTC

conradfr wrote: post #382

Apofis wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rounded corners using tables and gifs?

You know it. 9 cells tables, slicing your pixel-perfect corners in Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop, exporting as a gif with transparent color. That also reminds of the transparent 1px gif "hack". I'm not that nostalgic about that. Once in a while all that knowledge comes in handy for troubleshooting an email template...

> in Paint Shop Pro or Photoshop

That's a weird way of spelling Macromedia Dreamweaver...

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#408

Post by crazygringo » Wed, May 13, 2020, 8:41 PM UTC

Wow. It seems like real-time lighting and detail are getting to the point where they're so indistinguishable from reality...

...that now it's the actual quality of the models themselves, and even more of character motion, that are going to have to be the next steps in better graphics.

I'm stunned by the lighting and detail, absolutely stunned.

But at the same time, especially when you get into the architectural rooms, everything's far too "perfect". No grime, no crumbling edges, the motion of the ceiling opening is far too smooth, no vibration or catching, etc.

Likewise, the character's ponytail isn't bobbing like real hair at all. Sometimes her movements seem to be anti-gravity and bizarrely robotic. The leather over her shoulder seems to float rather than rest, and twists as if it were made of gelatin rather than stiff cowskin.

Not that these are criticisms at all -- I'm well aware of how hard they are. It's just fascinating to me to see, once rendering is basically "good enough", how the flaws in modeling come to the fore.

And so where are those advances going to come in? Are there going to be procedural-generation advances in creating realistic grime and imperfections and irregularities? Or deep-learning advances for realistic bodily movement? And why is it so damn hard to get clothing to actually fall on the body right, instead of always looking like a stretchy foam skinsuit?

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#409

Post by nabla9 » Wed, May 13, 2020, 8:42 PM UTC

Scaevolus wrote: post #236

nabla9 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can afford to put one or more GPU's per LED screen, there is little limit what you can render real-time, especially when the camera is so far away. I wonder how many GPU's that system had.

It used four synchronized PCs with a total cost of ~$20,000 to render three 4K panels, which is pocket change for a large production. The LED walls or a single lens costs more than that! This goes into way more technical details: https://ascmag.com/articles/the-Mandalorian Particularly interesting is how the system had ~10 frames of latency, so excessively fast camera turns would show lower quality renders.

Ah. of course. The system tracked camera and rendered what the camera saw and little around it accurately. Rest was rendered just for lightning.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#410

Post by jansan » Wed, May 13, 2020, 8:43 PM UTC

proverbialbunny wrote: post #196

ccktlmazeltov wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7Lk7idveeU

It looks like PS2 graphics.

I guess they go completely to the limit in their demos, so in actual games you will see it only after the next version of their engine has been released.