• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Unreal Engine 5 Demo - 4 years later...

Matt_Fox

Member
That jaw dropping Unreal Engine 5 Demo trailer is four years old this month. It presented a Tomb Raider style world, with incredible lighting, physics, fluidity and graphics.

It was the trailer that gave everyone hope that the next gen consoles, releasing later that year, would bring the wow factor.

Four years on and... apart from thinking time flies I'm really not sure what to make of it. Empty promises?





NRyscsW.png
 

RickSanchez

Member
The only positive point i can think of is that it has taken 4 years for developers to move over to and start developing full-fledged games on UE5, and most of those are still a work in progress. We know game development timelines are getting longer and longer. Many developers may have just started proper production of a UE5 game in the last couple of years, for example, CD Projekt building the new Witcher and Cyberpunk games on UE5. Plus it probably takes time for a brand new engine to spread amongst a developer base, for communal knowledge to accumulate and for developer skills to hone and mature enough to take full advantage of new tech. I expect to see more of these games in the next 5-6 years.

If you count from 2014 and consider the fact that UE4 games were still releasing last year, then the UE4 cycle was 9 years long. UE5 was fully launched in 2022, so we're still in the early stages of the UE5 cycle.
 
Last edited:
Have we not seen Unreal Engine 4 powered games that look similar to these videos? I think we've even seen better ones. So, I don't think there's any harm in trusting it. We just need to question whether consoles are ready for this.
Wasn't the UE5 demo running on a PS5? That makes it ready by definition.

The problem has always been that a lot of the things in these demos just don't translate well into actual games, either because implementing them isn't worth the time and effort, or because they're just plain impractical. That 33.000.000 poly model imported straight from Zbrush six minutes into the reveal is a prime example. While impressive on a purely technical level, there is simply no reason to ever do this in an actual game. File sizes for raw Zbrush models are gigantic and unlike retopologized models made using the standard asset creation pipeline they can't even be animated, making them a uniquely terrible option for games.

To me it just felt like they primarily came up with all the fancy shit in this trailer not for games, but for movies and TV shows, which kind of makes sense, considering that's one area they were making efforts to expand into around that time.
 
Matrix Awakens was more impressive tbh.
Given that average AAA open world game takes 5 years to develop, I am not too surprised we have not seen too many UE5 visual showcase games.
But Robocop Rogue City looks fantastic, to point out one.

Its crazy that a game from a AA dev is still one of the best showcases for the engine within an actual game.

Also a great showcase for how it can improve visuals for small studios, the graphical jump from Terminator Resistance to Robocop is huge for example.
 

Portugeezer

Member
I don't doubt those demos, because unlike old UE4 demos which were basically cutscenes, these UE5 demos showed some sort of gameplay similar to what we see in many third person games.

These consoles simply haven't been well utilised. 4 years is not enough to make a AAA game these days and we're still seeing many crossgen games, even in 2024.
 
Last edited:

Magic Carpet

Gold Member
Fortnite! V-Bucks!
It's all ya need.

Digital Foundry was saying that the Raytracing in Lumen is not working with the way Ninite works and defaults to some old way of doing things.
I don't know what that means but I assume the tech is still in the working out the bugs phase.
 

Pigenator

Member
So a really limited demo, that was meticulously crafted for that specific showing, isn't reflective of the whole industry? Woah.

On a more serious note:
We'd probably see more mainstream games getting to that level halfway into next-gen, seems like those tech demos are always a generation ahead in terms of promises.

I don't expect any real game, with all the data and processing that needs to be done (that is not needed for a controlled demo) to be able to achieve those results in this gen.
 

LostDonkey

Member
It was never going to be like that in real world terms. People will never learn.

They're trying to sell an engine. By jumping on the bandwagon of a new console launch.

That's it
 

HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
Hellblade 2 is the closest we've seen to this level of detail.
Eh, nah. Not even that. Plus, Hellblade 2 is a game with very little going on and looks as good as it does partially due to that and it's still a ways behind in my eyes. That demo was on another level entirely.

That said, I'm confident that current consoles have the chucks to pull it off. We've yet to see what they can truly do.
 
Last edited:

Fbh

Member
I'm sure we are getting some pretty looking linear walking simulators towards the end of the gen.
When is that new Quanitc Dream Star Wars game coming out?
 
Last edited:

Seider

Member
"unreal engine 5 release date" in Google.

April 2022

Unreal Engine is written in C++ and features a high degree of portability, supporting a wide range of desktop, mobile, console, and virtual reality platforms. The latest generation, Unreal Engine 5, was launched in April 2022.

Unreal Engine 5 was available to developers in April 2022. Thats two years till today. Are we expecting AAA games developed for Next Gen in 2 years?

Hogwarts Legacy developed in Unreal Engine 4 = 5 years in development.

Star Wars Jedi Survivor - Unreal Engine 4 = 4 years in development.
 

NT80

Member




Have we not seen Unreal Engine 4 powered games that look similar to these videos? I think we've even seen better ones. So, I don't think there's any harm in trusting it. We just need to question whether consoles are ready for this.

I don't remember seeing anything as impressive as that Infiltrator demo on the last gen.
 

CamHostage

Member
The problem has always been that a lot of the things in these demos just don't translate well into actual games, either because implementing them isn't worth the time and effort, or because they're just plain impractical... File sizes for raw Zbrush models are gigantic and unlike retopologized models made using the standard asset creation pipeline they can't even be animated, making them a uniquely terrible option for games.

I mean, it seems to work pretty well if only you fill an entire room with one gigantic model repeated over and over, but...

Yeah, there were some interesting highlights from that initial demo which seemed almost obviously too good to be true, but then again, the context and the dialog reinforced what we were seeing right on the screen. This was a game demo, not a generalized Unreal multimedia production engine announcement. Epic announced it in the Summer Games Fest cycle of consumer product reveals; it was promoted among the first realtime next-gen software ever shown running on the PS5; they played it, beginning to end. The engine was also being sold at the time to developers for the first time, but demo was largely for us, the players.

Lumen in the Land of Nanite never came out as a playable game (which is kind of sad, since UE1, UE2, and UE3 basically were windows into the foundations of Unreal, UT2003/Championship, and Gears of War,) but it was demoed as if it was game, not a cutscene or tech demo.

Unreal-Engine-5.jpg


And then the breakdowns of technical details were game-oriented as well. Yes, Nanite objects were massive and static models, but Epic said that 70% of game graphics aren't made to move or be destroyed anyway. Also, yes, the file size is big, but this was a smart new mesh design and it could replace some of the multi-layered approaches which puff up game objects and so using Nanite might actually save file size. And yes, we're talking about potentially tens of millions of polygons for each model in a scene, but we're not going to show every one of those polygons all the time, the virtualized micropolygon geometry would simplify those objects to be more reasonable, so that they only take up as many polygons as needed for what's seen and every object on the scene has enough-but-not-too-much to run a scene.

Paper math makes Nanite seem win/win/win for detail/game size/performance, especially as the roadmap laid our further developments listed things Nanite couldn't do as being worked on.

The reality of Nanite as it relates to games we might actually play is complicated and curious to dig into, especially four years later and with a couple of launched or soon-to-release games using it. Still, it has been frustrating for gamers (and, from what I see of developers using UE5) for reality in 2024 to not line up with the reality projected in 2000.
 
Last edited:
That jaw dropping Unreal Engine 5 Demo trailer is four years old this month. It presented a Tomb Raider style world, with incredible lighting, physics, fluidity and graphics.

It was the trailer that gave everyone hope that the next gen consoles, releasing later that year, would bring the wow factor.

Four years on and... apart from thinking time flies I'm really not sure what to make of it. Empty promises?





NRyscsW.png

Next Gears and that captain America black panther game are pushing the engine hard. Hellblade 2 is also great looking so far.
 
The only positive point i can think of is that it has taken 4 years for developers to move over to and start developing full-fledged games on UE5, and most of those are still a work in progress. We know game development timelines are getting longer and longer. Many developers may have just started proper production of a UE5 game in the last couple of years, for example, CD Projekt building the new Witcher and Cyberpunk games on UE5. Plus it probably takes time for a brand new engine to spread amongst a developer base, for communal knowledge to accumulate and for developer skills to hone and mature enough to take full advantage of new tech. I expect to see more of these games in the next 5-6 years.

If you count from 2014 and consider the fact that UE4 games were still releasing last year, then the UE4 cycle was 9 years long. UE5 was fully launched in 2022, so we're still in the early stages of the UE5 cycle.
By the time Cyberpunk comes out PS6 could be out, certainly next Xbox will. But yea the dev time tables keep growing eventually it'll be 7 years for a cutting edge AAA to be developed. Microsoft has said current gen is 4-6 years seems like we're almost there.
 

Sokka

Member
I mean, game development can take a long time. I'm not surprised we haven't seen anything like it yet.

Also some games developing are probably still on Unreal Engine 4, they haven't taken that leap to 5 because it could disrupt their pipeline in some ways.

We just need patience.
 

CamHostage

Member
Crossgen has mostly stopped for new releases.

Plus, the anchor weight of cross-gen holding next-gen graphics back is overblown.

UE5 has fallback techniques if needed, and games can be ported. A couple existing UE5 games out now or coming soon like Stray Souls, Maximum Football, and First Descendent have past-gen versions despite using Nanite and Lumen; Robocop was going to have a Switch version, and Funko Fusion has a Switch release. Some things are easier to dramatically improve (or just easier to do) when you don't have to figure it out on lesser hardware, and at a certain point the bridge breaks and it's too hard to go back even if you wanted to (and diminishing software sales on past-gen platforms has started to change that decision for publishers,) but the reason so many gamers complain that they're not getting their minds blown by PS5/Xbox Series games isn't because some of them have PS4/XB1 versions.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
Yeah we have still to see the next gen sideways shuffle through a narrow gap in some rocks that they show in this video. Plenty of games have tried to recreate it, but none have managed it with this fidelity.
 

Haint

Member
Lords Of The Fallen 2 looks close enough to the demos, and this is a comparatively/relatively "low budget" game from a less seasoned developer. These aren't even the most impressive locations, I didn't realize NG+ wiped your vanilla save, so I can't cap the best stuff. RAW PC maxed:




 
Last edited:

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
This gens early hype was fun to talk about, people really got high on the power of fast SSD / I/o complex / etc.

Sony will PROBABLY outdo anything UE5 near the end of the generation though.
 
Last edited:

Imtjnotu

Member
That jaw dropping Unreal Engine 5 Demo trailer is four years old this month. It presented a Tomb Raider style world, with incredible lighting, physics, fluidity and graphics.

It was the trailer that gave everyone hope that the next gen consoles, releasing later that year, would bring the wow factor.

Four years on and... apart from thinking time flies I'm really not sure what to make of it. Empty promises?





NRyscsW.png

UE5 just wasnt ready. we have maybe a dozen games now running it out in the wild.

this is an Epic Games problem. not an industry problem
 
Top Bottom