Epic Games has surprise announced Unreal Engine 5, which displays photorealistic graphics on Sony's next-gen machine.
Unreal Engine 5 is already a reality. The remake of the veteran graphics engine from Epic Games has been unveiled at Summer Game Fest, the event hosted by media Geoff Keighley (also The Game Awards Master of Ceremonies). At the same time, the official channels of the creators of Fortnite have been updated with all the information and with the technical demo of the engine running on a PlayStation 5, the new generation machine from Sony.
"We have launched the first look at the Unreal Engine 5", published on its website. "One of our goals for the next generation is to achieve photorealism, be on par with CGI and real life," they say. Its intention is to put the technology in the hands of developers of all kinds, both large and small. That they will achieve, they say, thanks to production tools and "library content." The demo is titled Lumen in the Land of Nanite and is accompanied by explanatory comments. You can see it in full in the heading of this news.
What new features do you implement?
This demo visualizes one of the main technologies that have been introduced in Unreal Engine 5. Using this tool, studios will be able to offer as many geometric details as the eye is capable of seeing. This means that "hundreds of millions and billions of polygons" will be compressed, which can be directly incorporated into Unreal Engine 5. Nanite geometry streamed and scaled in real time. On the other hand, Lumen is a lighting technology that immediately reacts to the scene and changes in light. In this way, artists will be able to use Lumen to create dynamic scenes, in which, for example, the sun changes its angle depending on the time.
Unreal Engine 4.25 already works on the consoles of the present generation, while Unreal Engine 5 will be available for preview in early 2021. Later that year, the commercial launch will take place. It will be compatible with consoles of the present and the next generation, PC, MAC, iOS and Android.
Fortnite will be released in the new generation under Unreal Engine 4, but will later be retrofitted to the new version of the engine.
