Epic Games at this time introduced the following main model of their game engine, Unreal Engine 5. Headline options embody hundreds extra element and higher dynamic lighting, and improved content material streaming that would imply (paired with the precise {hardware}) an finish to games being interrupted by ranges loading. UE5 received’t launch till subsequent yr so we received’t see games constructed on it for a good whereas however they do have a elaborate tech demo to point out for now. I did initially suppose it was revealing a brand new Tomb Raider the place Lara turns into a superhero, however nah! Come watch.
Epic revealed Unreal Engine 5 on a livestream with Geoff Keighley. Along with speaking tech, they confirmed a demo operating in actual time on a PlayStation 5, named Lumen In The Land Of Nanite:
I actually did mistake it for a less-gritty course for Tomb Raider at first. It actually is only a tech demo, Epic say. They detailed among the tech in a blog post, which sounds helpful for builders and fairly for us.
They have Nanite, a geometry system the place 3D bits are “streamed and scaled in real time so there are no more polygon count budgets, polygon memory budgets, or draw count budgets; there is no need to bake details to normal maps or manually author LODs; and there is no loss in quality.” That’s why they’re so happy with the squillions of triangles are in all these statues.
Then there’s Lumen, “a fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes.” They clarify, “The system renders diffuse interreflection with infinite bounces and indirect specular reflections in huge, detailed environments, at scales ranging from kilometres to millimetres.”
One element that got here out of the livestream is a little more conditional. Referring to PlayStation 5 tech, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney stated that we would see an finish to mid-game loading screens.
“The ability of the hardware and the engine to stream in massive ammounts of content as you’re going through a huge environment, I think that’s going to have a much bigger impact on gaming than people are expecting right now. Until this next generation of hardware, previous generation console games had to be built to load data off of a spinning mechanical device, that has its roots in the 1950s,” Sweeney stated. He did say that the PS5’s higher than even top-end gaming PCs there, however seeing as PC {hardware} is ceaselessly advancing I think about we’ll catch up quickly sufficient.
“This is going to enable the types of immersion that we only could have dreamed of is in the past,” he continued. “The world of loading screens is over. The days of pop-in and geometry popping up as you’re going through these game environments are ended. The resulting effect is the ability to build games that are fully immersive from start to finish over hundreds of hours of gameplay, if that’s your game.”
Oh la la!
Epic say preview variations of Unreal Engine 5 can be out there in early 2021 then it’ll launch in full in late 2021, so I’d count on it won’t be 2022 or later till we begin seeing many games.
You can hear extra techchat in Keighley’s stream at this time:
