A lot of digital replacements have appeared instead of this year’s canceled E3 conference. They will bring interviews and announcements from publishers and developers in recent months. One of these events – the Summer Game Festival – is set to become a focal point for players, journalists and everyone else who is curious about this year’s gaming news.
The Summer Gaming Festival has already caused a stir in May, when it presented the technological and graphic progress of today’s video games – the new version of Unreal Engine 5. In a few minutes long video, we can see what can be expected to come with the new generations of consoles that are supposed to come at the end of this year.
The two of Epic Games developers jointly unveiled a technology demo called Lumen in the Land of Nanite, which, according to Kim Libieri from Epic Games, is a fully playable demo from the PlayStation 5 devkit.
We have to say that the whole shown location looks absolutely monumental and forces the observer to hold his breath. In addition, this impression is not interrupted by any loading and everything runs perfectly smoothly. The sample utilized dynamic resolution, and thanks to hardware limitations, we can most often see 2K. Which we still consider a great result for a mere demo, and we have no doubt that the developers will be able to meet the goal of photorealistic graphics that they set out to do.
The work with light is breathtaking. Daylight and its other sources look absolutely believable and cast realistic shadows. This is due to Lumen technology, which can process light data from millimeters to kilometers. In addition, developers will have a simplified job – they will see in the engine itself, even without real-time renders, what will be seen by players on consoles.
Other elements that will allow developers unimagined possibilities can be seen in the fine details of the architecture. The huge location offers a view of the absolutely perfectly elaborated details of the environment. At the same time, their number, where the last stone falling from the rocks is perfectly drawn, has an incredible effect.
These details have been taken care of by Nanite technology, which can display polygons from units up to hundreds of billions. Thanks to this technology, they no longer have to create low poly models. All you have to do is create assets with detailed graphics and the engine will take care of the adjustment itself – based on the hardware and where the player is looking.
Honestly, we are already „terrified“ by what hardware players will need for such sophisticated graphics. But we can’t wait to have the opportunity to create it. We are beginning to prepare for the increasing use of 3D Photogrammetry scans as the primary basis for the model – and this applies not only to individual 3D assets, but to the entire terrain.
But only time will tell. We don’t think everyone will stop optimizing their 3D models and use high poly models with an infinite number of tris. There will still be an effort not to waste polygons where it is not necessary.
The level of modeled details will definitely rise, and not everything will be solved only through a normal map. We are definitely waiting for even more beautiful 3D scenery in games, as well as 3D assets, which will be visually much closer to reality.
The new generation of Unreal Engine is expected in 2021 and will appear on all platforms. This includes consoles, which we can look forward to probably at the end of the year.