About a year ago, Epic Games released a demo putting on display their new Unreal Engine 5. That demo utilized a character named Echo and showed the impressive abilities of the engine in every manner from lighting to textures. Now, a second demo has been released today. Titled "Valley of the Ancient", Echo explores a detailed desolate rock world where she encounters an elaborate giant mech. And the demo, for lack of a better word, is breathtaking is revealing in detail more of the tools that game designers will have at their finger tips. A short demo clip for general audiences (running at 4K and 30 frames per second) was released todaythough developers say the engine “is absolutely capable of powering 60 frames per second experiences”. One of the new systems revealed today explains this capability, called the Temporal Super Resolution – an anti-aliasing variation that offers “quality approaching true native 4K at the cost of 1080p”. However, the demo was run at 30 frames to “absolutely maximize visual quality” for the demo:
In addition, a longer 15-minute video largely aimed at developers were released today. This longer demo also includes the announcement that early access for game developers for Unreal Engine 5 is now available ahead of the software officially shipping in 2022:
Among other things, both demos put on display the new game engine’s tech like Nanite, Lumen and its adaptable animation systems. In addition, a new World Partition system enabling the creation of expansive worlds with scalable content. The new demo was run on both a PS5 and Xbox Series X hardware (whereas last year's demo ran only on a PS5).
To give audiences a taste of the engine in use, a trailer was released today over at Square Enix that announced the next mainline entry of the Dragon Quest franchise, titled Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate. This game will use Unreal Engine 5 thus showing the engine's potential in action as opposed to a fixed demo. Check it out below:
Stay tuned!