As you all know, the next-gen consoles well on their way and will be in our hands Holiday this year. We’ve all been awaiting a next-gen graphics showcase. Well, our wishes have finally been answered with this mind-blowing demo from Unreal.
In this demo, Unreal’s Technical Director of Graphics Brian Karis and Special Projects Art Director Jerome Platteaux show off the immense power of Unreal Engine 5 on Sony’s new console, the PlayStation 5.
This real-time demo puts the limelight on two new core pieces of technology in for the Unreal Engine 5, “Lumen” and “Nanite.”
Lumen
Lumen is a fully dynamic global illumination solution that instantly adapts to light and scene changes. Lumen makes it a lot easier for artists and designers to create more dynamic scenes.
They will be able to change the sun angle for time of day and have light interact with the gameplay. In the video above, cockroaches scatter when a flashlight is shown on them.
Lumen gets rid of the need for lightmap bakes and to author map UVs. This will save studios massive amounts of time during production.
Nanite
Nanite is a virtualized micropolygon gemoetry. In layman’s terms, Nanite can bring cinema-quality assets can be imported directly in to Unreal Enginge 5. This includes ZBrush sculpts. photogrammetry scans. and even CAD data.
Nanite’s geometry is scaled in real-time and gets rid of the need for count budgets, ploygon memory budgets or draw count budgets. It’s truly amazing the amount of detail in the above demo.
Let us know in the comments below what you think in the demo? Have you been convinced to get a PlayStation 5 now?
You might also be interested in how the Oculus Quest 2’s on the horizion.