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A first look at Unreal Engine 5

unrealengine.com

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Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#181
post #125
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.

I'm almost certain they are. HW raytracing is of the big selling points of the new console generations, and if they achieved these kinds of results without it, then I would have to reconsider my skepticism of the occult.

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Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#182

Can someone help me articulate my issue with this? Looking at a lot objects, they seem unnaturally detailed. Like the bugs, or the statue at around 6 minutes. Something about it makes me really uncomfortable feeling physically. Is this like a weird infinite depth of field kind of thing?

There's no distance blur and the entire shot is "in focus". These shots would be impossible to take with a camera. In addition, if you game a bunch, you'd expect LOD to drop with distance, but here it doesn't.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#184

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 w…

Dude I spent a large portion of my early career as a web developer making rounded corners on divs using all sorts of kludges

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#185

The environment demo is very impressive - wonder why they didn't put a bit more effort in to the character, it would have been insanely impressive if the character detail was next-gen.

I'd just assumed it was a "hey, wouldn't this be great if Lara Croft was standing here instead" place-holder.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#186
post #161
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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…

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…

I think raytracing has the potential to be a big leap forward. Real-time lighting and shadows are still incredibly limited, and most games are only able handle dynamic shadows from a hand-full of light-sources at a time. I think we don't see the difference yet because baked lighting gets a really good result, but I think after we live for a while in a world where every flickering candle, and every emissive texture in a game is a fully-fleged, shadow-casting, dymamic light source, then we are going to look back at current gen games and see how static and artificial the lighting is.

But I do agree with you in general that more advanced simulation is a huge, largely untouched opportunity in games.

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#188

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 w…

CIG's customizations to the Lumberyard engine have been pretty impressive - believe they're working on SDF now

Re: A first look at Unreal Engine 5

#189

It's great to see that graphics continue to improve, but I think the pipelining of reproducing physical space characteristics is most interesting to me. One of the things they mention in the video is using tools to measure how real spaces echo and then reproducing those echo characteristics in virtual spaces. Techniques like that have enormous potential for allowing us to use virtual space and actual space collaborat…

As a high-end builder, I would love to integrate a wall like this into a project. The ability (as shown with the Mandelorian video) the screens have to produce light would be incredible in interior living spaces.
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