What is Unreal Engine 5? How does Unreal Engine affect video games?

Just after "Unreal Engine 4" was updated to version 4.25, Epic Games brought "Unreal Engine 5" with a demo video on May 13, 2020. Although the video was less than 10 minutes long, its technical presentation made netizens scream, “Come to the next era!”. When watching images made by Unreal Engine 5, It is difficult to tell whether it is a real movie lens or a virtual game screen. In addition to elegantly describing it with "real", "fascinating" lamented by netizens is more expressive.

The "Unreal Engine 5"

The "Unreal Engine 5" that "stuns the chin of netizens" is mainly based on two new core technologies-Nanite and Lumen .
  • Nanite is a virtual micro-polygonal geometry that allows artists to create all the geometric details that the human eye can see.
  • Lumen is a fully dynamic global illumination solution that can react to scene and lighting changes in real time without the need for special ray tracing hardware.
Not easy to understand? Then feel it again from the picture.

Unreal Engine 5

This is one of the scenes in the demo video. With Nanite virtual geometry, movie-level art works composed of hundreds of millions of polygons can be directly imported into the Unreal Engine, whether it is a sculpture from Zbrush or a CAD scanned by photogrammetry. Under normal circumstances, game players see the rendered screen, and for game developers, every tiny detail in this screen is made up of triangular faces.

This is what the game developer sees:
Unreal Engine 5
This is not noise, but the superposition of countless triangles. It is reported that the original geometric triangles in each frame of the picture are more than one billion, and Nanite can roughly compress them into 20 million lossless triangles.

Let's take a look at Lumen.

Lumen's main focus is dynamic global illumination. This system can render indirect specular reflections and diffuse reflections that can bounce infinitely in large and delicate scenes; as small as millimeters and as large as kilometers. Based on this, artists and designers can create more dynamic light movement scenes, such as changing the daylight angle of the day, turning on the flashlight or opening a hole in the ceiling.

Not only that, dynamic lighting also produces specular reflections. In addition, the demonstration also showed the existing engine functions, including: Chaos physics and destruction system, Niagara VFX, convolution reverb and ambient stereo.

Unreal Engine 5

Chaos physics and destruction system simulate falling rock rigid body

Niagara VFX

As for convolution reverb and ambient stereo, it is recommended to go to the video experience. For the visual display brought by technology, if the impact of the close-range picture is not strong enough, then you can take a look at the whole room.

If the indoor scene is still not enough to explain the stunning nature of these technologies, then look at the outdoor from above the horizon-lighting, character movement, realism, details, really is the game screen configuration of the movie special effects level!

Unreal Engine 5

The game screen is so realistic, it is no wonder that netizens exclaimed netizens, "What's the difference between this and reality?" In addition, there is also a marvel at the technology from developers:


Many people who may be concerned about the most shocking and intuitive feelings are in the rendering of lumen. But in fact, for developers like us, if Nanite can replace the tedious process of normal baking map of this set of high and low models of the previous generation, it is really a big surprise. The wife is very comfortable! (Unfortunately I am not currently a developer of UE)


"Unreal Engine 5" has not yet been released. It is expected that a preview version will be released earlier in 2021. The full version may be launched by the end of 2021.
At that time, "Unreal Engine 5" will support the next generation host, the current generation host, PC, Mac, iOS and Android platforms.
 
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