philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Epic’s Unreal Engine 5: I got a first look on PS5, and now I’m a believer

The video, run on PlayStation 5 hardware according to Epic, is largely a showcase for how much detail Unreal Engine 5 can present, and how it can be lit. The whole 8-plus-minute video looks like a prerendered cutscene or part of a lush animated film.

The style, somewhere between Tomb Raider and Assassin's Creed, shows a woman exploring a cave. She finds endless elaborate statues and finally flies across a crumbling city that extends to the horizon. Unreal Engine 5's key features are an ability to bring in film-level digital assets and render them via tech called Nanite, which enables a ton of polygons to be presented at once, and a complete lighting system called Lumen that promises to dynamically light every scene detail of those polygons on the fly. Epic Games' 4K version of the video is below.

Ultra-real VR, immersive attractions

I don't have anything specific to announce for VR here, but I think it's going to create a really interesting march towards photorealism ... and as you see devices improve their resolution and other system parameters it's going to be very interesting."

Of course, Sony's PlayStation 5 will support VR, and will very likely get new PSVR hardware in the future.

Epic's Libreri points to enterprise VR in particular as a big target, where the extra capabilities could matter even more.

Is this the cinema-gaming crossover?

"Absolutely," Libreri says, pointing out that this is the way productions such as Disney's The Mandalorian already work. ... "I think over this next year, you'll see some awesome TV shows and movies that are starting to feel a little bit more like the stuff that we do when we play games all the time."

Full story and video at the link! https://www.cnet.com/news/epic-unreal-engine-5-i-got-first-look-ps5-now-im-believer/