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Epic Games has shown off the power of Unreal Engine 5 in a tech demo running on the PlayStation 5.
Technical director of graphics Brian Karis and special projects art director Jerome Platteaux walked us through the new engine’s capabilities in a presentation as part of the Summer Game Fest. This adventure, though sadly not a real game, is titled Lumen in the Land of Nanite. These are the two new core technologies that will arrive for the first time in Unreal Engine 5, and Nanite is “virtualized micropolygon geometry, which frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see.” On the other hand, Lumen is “a fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes.”
This. Is. PlayStation 5. In Real Time. And it’s gameplay of a new demo created by @epicgames pic.twitter.com/4jariz10zg
— Geoff Keighley (@geoffkeighley) May 13, 2020
“Nanite frees developers from having to worry about polygon count and levels of detail,” said Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney in an interview with Engadget. “It enables you to author all the content in the game at its full, movie quality level of resolution and then rely on the game engine to scale it down so it runs in real-time on every device.” Neato. Lumen in the Land of Nanite looks very impressive, and this is only scratching the surface of what’s in store for the PlayStation 5.
The PlayStation 5 will launch in holiday 2020.
