The Unreal Engine 5 has plenty of power, as the following clips clearly demonstrate. A thorough second look is needed to tell reality and engine apart
Is this real or just virtual? We don’t have to ask ourselves this question on a regular basis yet(!), but the Unreal Engine 5 already has what it takes for truly impressive tech demos.
On X (formerly Twitter), user Linus posts videos based on Epic’s engine. Under the motto Not really real, he shares the following clip:
Not really real, part II
What you’re seeing is Unreal Engine… from over 2 years ago.
Running on a single RTX2070 in real-time.
🧵 A thread pic.twitter.com/MclV7D67No
– Linus (●ᴗ●) (@LinusEkenstam) January 29, 2024
What do we see? A huge ravine is staged with beautiful lighting effects, individual pebbles lie on the ground and blades of grass can also be seen, which are set in motion by a slight breeze. The camera shakes a little because the movement comes from a VR camera, as Linus reveals in the comments
The second clip is no less impressive: A burning car looks so realistic that the illusion is baffling at first glance. But when the mouse pointer is dragged into the picture with a pink object, the illusion disappears. This is because the plume of smoke rising from the wreckage reacts to the object
This is from October 2023, a car fire running in real-time in Unreal Engine.
The types of games and graphics we will have at our disposal is going to be madness pic.twitter.com/ppvc0RQkCH
– Linus (●ᴗ●●) (@LinusEkenstam) January 29, 2024
The last split clip is a little faster: Here, the camera follows three sweets sliding along a frozen lake. So Unreal Engine 5 can also handle fast movements – provided the PC has enough power.
Are there graphics like this in games?
Some of the clips are already two years old, but there are still no real games with graphics like this. One of the reasons is obvious: most PCs simply can’t keep up
The jungle demo Electric Dreams Environment for example, impresses with its beautiful thicket, but also requires powerful hardware – and you can’t really play anything yet, just walk around.
KI, sound, physics, the player’s inputs and many other aspects of a game that consume computing power are not even at the start here. The amount of memory used is a completely different topic
However, there are already some phenomenally stylish games in Unreal Engine 5: Tekken 8 for example, doesn’t focus on realism, but the graphics are still more than worth a look. Hellblade 2 will be one of the absolute graphics hits of the year in just a few months. In the video above you can see more eye candy 2024.
In addition, the so-called bodycam shooters such as Unrecord should not go unmentioned, which place a particularly high value on realism. However, it remains to be seen whether they will also be convincing in terms of gameplay on release.
Other engines should of course not be talked down here. For example, Remedy’s in-house Northlight Engine really flexed its muscles in Alan Wake 2 last year.
What do you think of the clips? Can you still easily tell the difference between real footage and engine videos like this or do you have to look particularly closely to unmask the clips? What do you think will be the best game of the year? Let us know in the comments below
