Unreal Engine 5 Unveiled, Will Support Xbox Series X And Xbox One

" ..running on a PS5 dev kit"

Ah, instant strike...

But all kidding aside: I'm kinda excited to see what this new version of the engine can truly add to our gaming experiences, so bring it on.

It's a PS5 more closed to the end product than the XB?

If it was for showing the possibilities the should choose the console with the supose most computational capacity....

It craps all over the last inside Xbox to be honest

@Hobbesyall indeed. It shows more gameplay...

@Hobbesyall
I disagree. Firstly, this is a tech demo, not an actual product that will be available at retail for anybody to enjoy; it's gameplay that you will never get to play. Secondly, this is a tech demo of a game engine available on multiple platforms, including a more capable one (SeX) than the one used to demonstrate it (PS5). And thirdly, as underwhelming as Inside Xbox was, it gave us real games and even some exclusive ones at that. As of today at least, PS5 has nothing on Xbox.

The game looks good

Can't wait for that game.... Looks like a lot of fun!

And this isn’t even a Sony showcase, but Epic just put a huge feather in their cap. I mean I’ve seen the technical stuff MS put out last month and it was great. This footage is quite a lot like that, isn’t Gears 5 being used as a tech demo?

However, all anyone is going to remember about the last 2 weeks is Sony had gameplay (it was actually Epic and not actual gameplay) and MS didn’t (which I find more Ubisofts fault. Keeping in mind Ascent actually releases “footage” with IGN.) sighs.

It looks wonderful though.

Can you imagine what The Coalition is going to be able to do with this? 😍

@gingataisen

I completely agree.

Unreal Engine 5 looks amazing, Can't wait to see games running on this pretty soon.. Imagine Gears 6 on Unreal engine 5

Just for clarity, this is running at 1440p using Temporal Upscaling to 4k and 30fps.

@BAMozzy
Does PlayStation use Unreal on any of it's first-party titles?

@gingataisen Only a handful do the biggest of which is probably Days Gone.

I thought the demo looked mighty impressive but obviously will probably wont see the fruits from this until a couple years from now.

@redd214
I see. This showcase was probably aimed at third-party devs, then.

@gingataisen A couple - Concrete Genie, Days Gone - as well as games like Final Fantasy VII remake. Of course there are numerous other games that use Unreal on PS4 that are on PC and/or Xbox too

@BAMozzy
So the Remake is first-party now, huh? 😉

@gingataisen yeah probably but was def good to showcase whats theoretically possible on the new boxes especially after the slight overreaction from last week

@gingataisen Of course not - hence I said 'as well as games like FFvii remake' - indicating that other 'exclusives' - not just 1st party, have used Unreal. There are quite a few other console exclusives that have used Unreal too - not all of them have been on PC too - that use Unreal on PS4.

Of course MS has Gears which is now a First Party developed title but that was originally developed by Epic and I would expect that to use Unreal 5. For all we know, that tech demo could become an Epic game on multiple platforms - not just PS5. That demo was 1440p and 30fps - without any ray-tracing for example - not too say it wasn't impressive - but its not 4k/60 so we don't know whether this new approach is very expensive - takes a lot of resources to do so can't run at 60fps and/or 4k on a PS5 or hasn't been well optimised to run better. Point is, if you think Gears 6 may be like this but 4k/60 and maybe using ray traced reflections too, that maybe too much - or maybe possible with some optimisation.

Unreal is going to be available for any devs that want to use it. Sony obviously has some great proprietary engines of their own used by their first party devs so it will be interesting to see whether or not other Engines implement their own versions of Nanite and Lumens.

@BAMozzy
I think Gears 6 at 4K and 60fps without ray-tracing is very doable. They got Gears 5 to run with ultra settings at 4K and 100+fps without proper optimization.

@gingataisen Of course it is - the point I was making though was whether it would be possible utilising Nanite and Lumens to this extent and add ray traced reflections as well. If the game is built in the exact same way, the same quality of visuals and draw distances, lighting etc then I would have no doubt that 4k/60 & ray traced reflections.

It seems that the Nanite and Lumens addition is quite expensive - the fact its running at 1440/30 on a PS5 - something a lot more powerful than a XB1X, would seem to indicate that having those incredible high triangle counts and real time global bounce illumination are much more 'expensive' than more traditional methods that can lead to pop-in and would require baked lighting to create the illusion of light bounce.

Just because a game can run at a 'high' level on current gen, doesn't mean that the next gen version 'should' run a game better or at least on a par with. You have to remember that Gears 5 was built to run at 1080p on XB1 and looked amazing too btw but it was designed around that hardware and they could scale certain things back, use low quality assets in the distance that get swapped out as you got closer and closer. This for example isn't swapping them out - you still have the same high quality asset in the distance but as you get closer and therefore 'larger' and more detailed, the engine is scaling the number of polygons appropriate to the resolution. For example, if an object has 8bn triangles to make its shape and the colour for each, you don't 'see' those around the back so those don't need rendering, a pixel can't be multiple colours or different triangles so they can all be approximated to a single triangle/colour etc and as you get closer, the image gets bigger and each 'pixel' has fewer triangles etc. That Asset though is still in the GPU as a 'high quality' asset that needs processing - instead of a 'low quality' assets because its too far away.

The way it works seems similar to TV content. A furry cat up close at 4k can probably show every hair on its fur but as it moves away from the camera, the fur gets too small for an individual pixel to accurately show individual hairs - each pixel is two hairs big so you get the average of those two hair colours displayed - as it moves further back, each pixel needs to average more and more hairs so the finer details get more and more lost. That cat doesn't change - its just that the pixels are not small enough to accurately show all that detail. Currently, games may use flat 2D assets for trees, houses etc in the distance that suddenly 'pop' in as higher quality at a certain point - maybe several times before you get close enough to render the highest quality asset in that game. Devs have to create all these lower quality assets which takes time and space

With this new system, they just build the high quality asset and put it in the game and that asset automatically scales to the resolution. If its only occupying 1000pixels, it only needs 1000 triangles. Its still a high quality asset that still uses up more resources than a lower quality asset so has an impact on the processing time of the GPU.

This is why I wonder if Gears 6 'could' look like that at 4k/60 with Ray Tracing. I am sure that Gears 5 could run at 4k and over 60fps on PS5 as it can on Series X but its not using Nanite or Lumens, relying on other methods instead that are much less taxing on the hardware...

@whizzkidd It's most likely just a contract with sony. That's way they presented the game play on PS5.

@Hobbesyall I disagree. While Inside Xbox announced real games coming to the system all that were announced on PS5 was a tech demo, made by epic showcasing technologies that will also be available on Series X and with more power available. Also, UE5 is coming late 2021 so first games using it should arrive only at early/mid 2022. That said, we still know nothing of the capability of the games that will be available at launch on PS5 besides God Fall and a couple of multiplatform games presented on inside xbox.

Don't get me wrong, the showcase was great, UE5 is amazing and all the techs presented in the video gives us a good glimpse of what's coming. But this is in no way comparable to an event showing real games to a console.

I think before we know it every company has implemented some version of these technologies in their engines and 2-3 years down the line this will be how next-gen (by then the current-gen) looks in many games. At least all exclusive games.

@BAMozzy
Agreed; this is very demanding tech. Whatever games are being built from the ground up using UE5, we won't see them until 2022 at the earliest. By then, devs would have a good understanding of how the consoles work, and how to flex this new, powerful tech. That being said, the best looking UE4 game this gen was Gears 5, and I expect Gears 6 to achieve the same result using UE5.

I think it will depend on what the devs want to do, how they want to use that engine and whether or not the use the features to their fullest or build their game in the more traditional way. They could for example use just Lumens to achieve a more natural and dynamic lighting, maybe use Nanite more sparingly for certain aspects of the world they create.

Its possible too that they may use other technology - like VRS to hit higher resolution or use DLSS to look more like a native 4k rather than an upscaled or temporally reconstructed image - not that those tell tale signs of Chequerboard rendering are noticeable in game-play from a normal viewing distance. It can be near impossible to tell a native 4k from a 1440p DLSS (or even 1080p) game so I am less concerned about native resolutions than I was at the start of last generation when 900p looked softer, blurrier than 1080p.

I don't care that games like H:ZD or God of War are running at 50% 4k and using Temporal Reconstruction to make up the other 50% of the image - its a far better result than running at a native 50% and then upscaling. Its easily as good as any native 4k would be from a normal seating distance and if you have to pause the image to check for indications of that method, then does it matter?

If Gears 6 uses DLSS and/or VRS to achieve a 4k image instead of running at a native 4k, I really don't care. Chances are that would mean they are using the GPU resources on other things instead and I have no doubt it would look superior to Gears 5....

@Hobbesyall stop posting this everywhere. We get it buddy, even though Series X is more powerful so it's best there but whatever.

@duhsoares21 If Xbox wants to conquer the crowd just get those games from the inside and some more and have them running! The inside was a travesti of a show. Xbox Will get eaten if PS comes out swinging with something like this, and there is no need for that!!!

@Quaali sorry for trying to call it what it is ! Sometimes marketing dollars aren’t everything ! And what we’ve seen so far is MS flexing marketing, all I want is for them to level and show us what we want to see !! And I wanna see what Xbox has in store I’m excited, but above all be honest !