While the world is constantly battling with COVID-19, gamers are excited about something truly different. It¡¯s the year when we¡¯ll get to see new consoles and what they¡¯ll be capable of.?
We¡¯ve seen some games that Xbox premiered last week and the crazy realistic graphics the consoles will be able to render, however, we were awaiting a glimpse of performance by PlayStation 5. And yesterday Epic Games quenched that thirst for many.
They revealed the new engine that future games will make the most of -- The Unreal Engine 5 and gave us a small 9-minute demo on the PS5 developer kit that truly blew our brains off.
From the moment the demo began, you notice that this looks nothing like a game. In fact, it looks a lot more realistic, like a movie, and that¡¯s what Unreal Engine was going for. UE5 is going to deliver photorealism on par with movie CG (computer graphics).
It is harnessing two new technologies that were never seen in Unreal Engine -- Nanite, for generating crisp and detailed geometry of the images on display and Lumen which is a dynamic real-time illumination to make the lighting look a lot more realistic.?
Nanite is essentially a virtualised micropolygon geometry that can easily import film-quality textures or source art and the engine will scale it in real-time. This allows the game maker to use millions and billion of polygons for adding detail to objects.?
Lumen basically makes light bounceback and reflection look a lot more realistic. It dynamically reacts to surfaces, the way light travels and in the end results in imagery that¡¯s mind-blowingly true to life.
In case you were wondering if you should truly ignore Xbox Series X and just start saving for the Play Station 5, you should know that UE5 isn¡¯t exclusive to PlayStation 5. UE5 will be used to make for games on Xbox Series X, as well as PC, Mac and smartphones.?
Early access for the engine will commence early next year, followed by a full-fledged launch later in 2021.
Check out the demo below: