[Digital Foundry] Fortnite's Unreal Engine 5 Upgrade Reviewed - Lumen/Nanite at 60FPS - PS5 vs Xbox Series X/S + PC!

Lunatic_Gamer

Lunatic_Gamer

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Fortnite's full Unreal Engine 5 upgrade has arrived, delivering cutting-edge next-gen rendering features like Lumen global illumination and Nanite geometry at 60fps on PS5, Xbox Series X and even Series S! How big of an upgrade is it? How do the consoles compare? And what further features does PC bring to the party? John Linneman and Alex Battaglia have the answers!

www.eurogamer.net

Fortnite's massive UE5 update delivers next-gen features on all consoles at 60fps

Lumen, Nanite, Unreal Engine 5. These watchwords for a new generation of game developers are now finally realised in a shipping game: Epic's own Fortnite.
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net
 
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Consoles compared:

  • PS5 renders at an average of 55% of 4K
  • XSX renders at an average of 59% of 4K
  • XSS renders at an average of 73% of 1080p
  • All three consoles have Lumen and Nanite enabled, but XSS does not have Lumen reflections
  • XSS has more limited shadows on blades of grass and other foliage
  • XSS lighting doesn't look quite as rich as the other versions
  • DF thinks XSS does a surprisingly good job overall and still produces a very attractive image
  • Locked 60fps in all of their testing, but they can't say with certainty whether or not there are dips to be found
 
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Summary:

- New tech is available in 60hz mode, disabled in 120hz modes on console
- Uses 1/16th rays per pixel and denoizer to smooth it out.
- Some Pop-in exists even with nanite compatibility

- Unreal 5.1's improved TSR (temporal super resolution) is used extensively. The native resolution is far below 4K but TSR does a good job

- Consoles:
- PS5|Series X have identical visual quality. Target 4K using TSR. Internal resolution is purely dynamic from 864p to 1836p.
- PS5 runs average of 55% of 4K and Series X runs 59% of 4K.
- The lowest bound mentioned above is just an engine minimum in case something crazy happens, doesn't mean the game can drop that low every now and then.

- Series S 540p ~ 1080p using TSR. Averages around 73% of 1080p native.
- Series S doesn't use Lumen reflections and relies on classic SSR
- Series S also adjusts/reduces foliage and light maps to hit a consistent performance
- Series S does still retain the new GI and Nanite improvements.

- PC corner:
- Epic's Software vs Hardware Lumen compared. Hardware lumen can show character models in reflection, SW does not
- Hardware has more accurate GI and reflections and less light leaking compared to SW lumen
- PC version can have shader stutters which can be a competitive disadvantage.
- #Stutter Struggle is way better than other recent UE4 games, but it is still there. Alex spoke to Unreal Engine folks and they are looking into it but some things are unavoidable as you can "outrace" the list of PSOs being streamed in. They are looking into it.

- Performance:
- DF did not encounter any drops in their testing. All consoles were locked, however there is a possibility that there might be issues in some scenarios
 
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woof at those cutbacks on Series S. BUT i think the console is doing exactly what its designed to do. Essentially run a current gen engine w/ needed cutbacks. update looks pretty nice IMO.
 
Wooxsvan said:
woof at those cutbacks on Series S. BUT i think the console is doing exactly what its designed to do. Essentially run a current gen engine w/ needed cutbacks. update looks pretty nice IMO.
Click to expand...

Aside from Lumen reflections in the water, it has pretty much everything. Things like a little nip tuck in foliage here and there is par for course and happens even between PS5 and SX in different games.

I'd say it's doing a fantastic job especially hitting a locked 60 FPS
 
Lumen/ray traced GI on Series S at 60fps is probably the most impressive bit here. I tried on PS5 and Series S and it does look great on both. As they mention it's down to 1080p and down to even 540p internally, but in practice in motion the new lighting system is awing me more than the resolution drop takes away.

I still find the BR game itself tedious though. I wish they did a longer campaign of the little chapter single player bits. Save the world hasn't been touched in a while and still uses the older engine.
 
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DenchDeckard said:
So series S can run a real next gen engine....Nice!
Click to expand...

Yep, outside of one specific feature (Lumen reflections), it's running the same features and also at 60 FPS.

TSR seems like it's the real deal and as good, maybe better, than FSR 2.1.
 
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DenchDeckard said:
So series S can run a real next gen engine....Nice!
Click to expand...

Indeed. And it looks really good in motion. A lot of the not being next gen stuff was obvious fud when so much is still made for 8th gen consoles, it's not even the weakest link yet, but it also has the same CPUs, the same SSD speed, and all the GPU features, just scaled down so you're running at a lower resolution and culling a few things like smaller objects casting realtime shadows, but in motion side by side with my PS5, the next gen experience is very much largely there.
 
Mr Moose said:
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Is Lumen/Nanite dynamically on/off or something?
Edit: It's light maps?
Click to expand...
The accuracy/resolution could be adjusted on the fly. Or for specific areas. XSS has way less accurate "finger print" of the world, thus the lighting looks like that.
 
Can you still run it with old graphics settings? If anything , competitive games should have focus on performance and not graphics.
 
They say XSS performs OK but I really disagree here.

- XSX outputs usually 3.5x more pixels than XSS
- But XSS completely lacks ray traced reflexions (basically has half-lumen), has less vegetation, has less shadows and has even lower quality GI.

It's worse than the difference seen in the Matrix demo where the only difference was resolution (often 4x more on XSX). Again it shows XSS hardware is a really badly designed hardware and performs really bad in UE5 as it's only 3 times less powerfull than XSX but performs way below that gap.

Usually you don't see that kind of performance degradation will less powerful hardware using the same tech. It's really odd how poorly that hardware performs in that compute heavy engine.
 
Physiognomonics said:
It's worse than the difference seen in the Matrix demo where the only difference was resolution (often 4x more on XSX). Again it shows XSS hardware is a really badly designed hardware and performs really bad in UE5 as it's only 3 times less powerfull than XSX but performs way below that gap.
Click to expand...

This is not correct.
 
adamsapple said:
- Series S 540p ~ 1080p using TSR. Averages around 73% of 1080p native.
- Series S doesn't use Lumen reflections and relies on classic SSR
- Series S also adjusts/reduces foliage and light maps to hit a consistent performance
Click to expand...
Yikes. 540p in a competitive shooter with crossplay with other more powerful hardware shouldnt be allowed.
 
They say XSS performs OK but I really disagree here.

- XSX outputs usually 3.5x more pixels than XSS
- But XSS completely lacks ray traced reflexions (basically has half-lumen), has less vegetation, has less shadows and has even lower quality GI.
Click to expand...

Can't say if 3.5x less pixels you are telling is accurate but yea series s has 3x less gpu power than series x so yea maybe the cutbacks are around that level both in resolution and visuals.
 
>The lead engineer says Epic is taking this seriously.

I fucking hope so. The stutter compilation issues have been going on for years and Epic must have been aware for a long time now. Millions of gamers are still experiencing this issue. They`re either too incompetent or careless to fix it. Probably the latter since most devs running UE, the most widely used game engine on the damn planet, can`t be bothered to give the option to let shaders pre-compile.

This honestly pisses me off. This isn`t something that has been going on for a weeks or even a few months, it has been an issue for YEARS. No bothered to get up and address it. They`re all acting like it`s a non-problem.

Those who ignore this issue can suck a fatty. Just play on consoles if you can when the game you`re playing is running on UE.

What a joke.
 
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Mr Moose said:
It's weird that they were talking about it being locked while showing a few dips.
TSR seems really good.
Click to expand...
I noticed a dip to 59 FPS at 25:10 min. on XSX, are there others? Edit: another 1 FPS dip spotted at 25:35 so it's not "perfectly locked" on XSX. I don't know why they said they never managed to drop the framerate.
 
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Physiognomonics said:
They say XSS performs OK but I really disagree here.

- XSX outputs usually 3.5x more pixels than XSS
Click to expand...
We have seen a 4x gap all gen. A lot of native 4k games on the XSX are just 1080p on the XSS while also downgrading settings. They dont even have identical settings. Its way more than a 4x gap.

The problem is not just the lack of RAM, but also the fact that the XSS GPU runs at a very low clock of 1.45 GHz. RDNA 2.0 cards are supposed to be running above 2.0 GHz to achieve their performance gains. Both the XSS and XSX are being held back by their conservative clocks where as PS5 is pushing above its weight thanks to its higher clocks.

A 6 tflops XSS with higher clocks and a decent ram pool wouldve been the 1440p machine they advertised. Now we have a situation where the XSS is by far the best selling of the two Xbox consoles and a lot of people are going to have to settle for 540p, lack of proper ray tracing and other next gen features.
 
Gaiff said:
>The lead engineer says Epic is taking this seriously.

I fucking hope so. The stutter compilation issues have been going on for years and Epic must have been aware for a long time now that millions of gamers are experiencing this issue. They`re either too incompetent or careless to fix it. Probably the latter since most devs running UE, the most widely used game engine on the damn planet, can`t be bothered to give the option to let shaders pre-compile.

This honestly pisses me off. This isn`t something that has been going on for a weeks or even a few months, it has been an issue for YEARS. No one got up and bothered addressing it. They`re all acting like it`s a non-problem.

Those who ignore this issue can suck a fatty. Just play on consoles if you can when the game you`re playing is running on UE.

What a joke.
Click to expand...
Whoa pal, relax.
 
Gaiff said:
>The lead engineer says Epic is taking this seriously.

I fucking hope so. The stutter compilation issues have been going on for years and Epic must have been aware for a long time now that millions of gamers are experiencing this issue. They`re either too incompetent or careless to fix it. Probably the latter since most devs running UE, the most widely used game engine on the damn planet, can`t be bothered to give the option to let shaders pre-compile.

This honestly pisses me off. This isn`t something that has been going on for a weeks or even a few months, it has been an issue for YEARS. No one got up and bothered addressing it. They`re all acting like it`s a non-problem.

Those who ignore this issue can suck a fatty. Just play on consoles if you can when the game you`re playing is running on UE.

What a joke.
Click to expand...
They are clearly not taking it seriously. You are a 100% right. The fact that Epic's own game is having this issue is simply unacceptable.
 
SlimySnake said:
A 6 tflops XSS with higher clocks and a decent ram pool wouldve been the 1440p machine they advertised. Now we have a situation where the XSS is by far the best selling of the two Xbox consoles and a lot of people are going to have to settle for 540p, lack of proper ray tracing and other next gen features.
Click to expand...
I can assure you that people who buy the Series S don't give a fuck about this stuff, are not the target audience for video breakdowns like what DF does.
 
Competitive players might wanna hop onto the Series S version.

Lower vegetation means you can see the enemies better from afar.

🤔
 
A 6 tflops XSS with higher clocks and a decent ram pool wouldve been the 1440p machine they advertised. Now we have a situation where the XSS is by far the best selling of the two Xbox consoles and a lot of people are going to have to settle for 540p, lack of proper ray tracing and other next gen features.
Click to expand...
whoa whoa, xss owners knows what their machines are only capable of so yea as long as they can play games fine with decent visuals, who cares ?
 
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SlimySnake said:
We have seen a 4x gap all gen. A lot of native 4k games on the XSX are just 1080p on the XSS while also downgrading settings. They dont even have identical settings. Its way more than a 4x gap.

The problem is not just the lack of RAM, but also the fact that the XSS GPU runs at a very low clock of 1.45 GHz. RDNA 2.0 cards are supposed to be running above 2.0 GHz to achieve their performance gains. Both the XSS and XSX are being held back by their conservative clocks where as PS5 is pushing above its weight thanks to its higher clocks.

A 6 tflops XSS with higher clocks and a decent ram pool wouldve been the 1440p machine they advertised. Now we have a situation where the XSS is by far the best selling of the two Xbox consoles and a lot of people are going to have to settle for 540p, lack of proper ray tracing and other next gen features.
Click to expand...
Nothing can't change and they needed to hit a price point at certain loss margin... What about accepting it is what it is? Both consoles go below 900p natively and that's not because of the Series S holding them back, it's them being weak anyway regardless of the Series S
 
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