Stunning Unreal Engine 5 tech demo generates intense debate

We've written a lot about the power of Unreal Engine 5 for both game design and film and TV (and for 3D visualisation using Gaussian splatting). Now a new example of the engine's abilities is generating debate over on YouTube. It shows graphics that verge on the photorealistic, but how viable is it for practical use?

Scans Factory's Unreal Engine 5.4 demo shows a fictional version of Rome with cafes, cobblestone streets and, of course, lots of Vespas. The demo made use of UE5's Lumen and Nanite as well as photogrammetry technology on RealityCapture software. It has multiple lighting scenarios and more than 1,000 assets including effects, sounds and level instances.

Rome - Italian Town - Walkthrough - YouTube

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The 5.5GB demo can be downloaded via a Google Drive link to explore on PC. It presents three scenarios: Sunset, Overcast, and Daytime. The Overcast scenario is shown above, complete with rain and puddles. The footage of the latter below was captured by John Papadopoulos at DSO Gaming with a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 at Native 4K/Ultra Settings.

Unreal Engine 5.4 - Rome Italian Town Tech Demo - Native 4K/Ultra - NVIDIA RTX 4090 - YouTube

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The visuals look striking if a little uncanny (partly due to the lack of rubbish and tourists!). But as many people point out in the comments, turning this into a working game with lots of NPCs would likely lead to very different performance.

Some of the viewers of Papadopoulos footage are blown away. "Imagine Assassin's Creed II Remake with THIS," one person wrote. "All that really matters are those wet cobblestones and puddles. When a gamer sees a puddle like that, they feel immersed all day," someone else suggested.

But others are less convinced, with some noting that the environment is better suited to movies and TV.

"Static geometry and good lighting have always looked good since Playstation 2, the inherent problem of video games is when things start moving, they lack interactivity, all the billions of polygons end up meaning nothing because you cant interact with them, inherently because they are flat surfaces trying to imitate nature," wrote one person, putting a downer on things. "This has been possible to do, since the 20 series came out (assuming you have a 2080). If it's just art, you can do this. Add everything else, then it's not running like this."

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One critic went further. "This was a waste of resources and tech generation. All these new games don’t look that much better than some 10 year old PS4 titles yet consume more computing power and run even worse. Devs focused on simulating expensive bounce lighting, raytracing every mirror surfaces for no reason, render billions of polygons that can’t be seen because of low resolutions. It’s madness, only next Doom and GTA 6 can save this gen."

Others agreed. "Feels very digital and uncanny," one person wrote. "Some of the buildings feel like very low res meshes with high res textures. For me, this is a reminder that you can throw a lot at making something look realistic, but anything that's lacking will drag the whole thing down." "It's basically a Counter Strike map with rain effects," someone else added. "Fine for an FPS but not for showing off the tech."

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