Demo of new Unreal game engine is unreal

The implied world created for this demo looks rather neat.

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The uncanny valley is narrowing and that’s only highlighting its limitations.

They can make the environment completely believable, but not the subtlety of the girl’s face.

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No one ever complained about Pac-Man’s oddly jaundiced skin tone or the way Donkey Kong’s fur blew in the wind.

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To add to what @cepheus42 said. That PS5 is slated to have a less powerful GPU and processor than that new Xbox. And based on the best guess you can potentially make right now there should be at least one or two PC cards already out with more processing power, if not every single bell and whistle.

Which is not to slag on the PS5.

It’s just that they’re not even running this on the really fancy bit of kit. They supposedly ran this on an actual production spec PS5. It’s not a roided out work station, or using multiple inaccessibly expensive work station GPUs. Not what it can do with anything you can throw at it. It’s on what’s (we think) meant to be an accessible, affordable consumer device.

That’s impressive in it’s own right.

yeah, the 2080 Super and the 2080 Ti.

More than likely. But teraflops don’t really compare cleanly across unrelated architectures. None of the stated specs really tell you anything specific without a chip to poke with a stick. And consoles use GPUs a bit differently, tending to share ram with the system. Which can muddy things up.

True that. I don’t know a sprite from a polygon but sometimes a game would come out with graphics that would just blow my kid mind.

Milestone moments for me include Test Drive 3, Myst, Wing Commander III, Rise of the Robots, and Flight Unlimited. After many years without gaming I was last blown away seeing The Witcher 3 on a big screen.

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Games really like instanced objects - in terms of the amount of stored data (there’s only saved data for one sunflower, for example), but also for rendering, to a lesser degree. And a modern game engine is replacing those higher poly sunflowers with lower poly models at a distance - and even flat sprite “billboards” when far enough. (The fact that the game struggles with single-digit frame rates to show… a field of sunflowers is rather sad, really. Even if they deliberately didn’t optimize it to show how many polygons they could render.)

Traditionally, games have certainly been full of many copies of the same object, over and over again - and it often shows. I wouldn’t say the optimization interfered with the creative process so much as the creative process entirely revolved around the limitations imposed by the need for reducing polygons and texture sizes…

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Oblig

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There was a project that died because it couldn’t raise enough money to do “real animation.”

I don’t get it.

Their Unreal “pre-visualizations” already look feature-film quality to me

I guess you’ve hit on my concern here. If the engine is able to produce the polygon count per frame in the billions, however the hell they deliver that in the processing, then what does this mean for entry into using the development environment? Having to handle those kinds of assets - just importing the fuckers will take this out of the reach of the home creator if the platform prioritizes this kinda mega workflow i.e. will the software now be focused on studios with the appropriate grunt and push it out of reach of users who don’t have or want the photoreal aesthetic.

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Absolutely. I’ve been around PC games since my mum’s 286, but that brings with it its own problem, in that the huge WOW moments, which were the perfect combination of adolescence and technical leaps, cannot be replicated.

The jump to 256 colors, to SVGA, the first 3D accelerators, shaders… now I’m playing beautiful games like Witcher 3 or one of the AssCreeds and am duly impressed, but it’s nothing compared to the quicksilver waters of Morrowind or the smooth textures of P.O.D.

Oh well. Having said that, that’s a very impressive tech demo.

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I kinda agree but I’m wandering how much this issue may be emphasized by the aesthetic choices made in game creation compared to the choices made with the freedom of ‘suspension of disbelief’ in the linear narratives of cinema. For example the sound design in games always seems very obvious and in your face, especially when it comes to SFX where as in film it is one of the great tools for creating depth (except for Michael Bay!!).

Have you tried VR.

That’s pretty mind blowing for a lot of people.

Not me though. I have crap vision. My contacts tend to fog up in a HMD and my glasses are too big to fit.

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Not yet, the cost and space requirements have held me back so far. I have a feeling I might like it though. If my glasses fit -_-

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I play Elite Dangerous. A lot of it. And it’s kind of a killer app for VR. You’re locked into the seat of your spaceships, and so you can headlook but there’s really no body movement.

In my Squadron about half the guys play in VR and say they literally can’t handle pancake vision anymore. I’ve flown in VR with an HMD and a pilot’s chair, and a HOTAS, and voice commands. And while it’s all very immersive, I prefer to still play with the mouse and keyboard on a monitor. I’m just so much faster and deadlier than the VR guys who have to crane their necks and use sloppy throttle and stick movements.

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What’s the VR system of choice in your opinion? That’s another thing that’s been holding me back, it’s a pricey decision in a segment I’m not so familiar with. The Oculus Rift seems reasonalbe?

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Right now the top of the line is the Valve Index.

I do know a few guys who are looking at getting PiMax HMDs though. For a little while I considered getting the Samsung Odyssey+. But that was just because I could get it at a really massive discount through my work’s affiliate perks with Samsung.

I’m looking for 4k rez at 120 hertz in each eye and head tracking with no external beacons of any kind before I’m putting down money.

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fur looks a tad rough, it’s not raytraced, and there are only ten minutes of footage. As a sales pitch, it’s fine. But it’s not release quality.

Consider this blender movie, for instance. The render quality is leaps and bounds beyond unreal engine 4.

The story is weaker, the choreography isn’t as awe inspiring. But visually, it’s a finished product.