Epic Games today has officially unveiled the Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) which is the latest iteration of its famed game engine that have been used by many games over the years. What made the unveiling special though is the fact that Epic decide to demonstrate the new game engine running on real time using the yet to be released PlayStation 5.
Of course, to be specific, the demo utilized a PlayStation 5 development kit although just to be clear here, the UE5 will support other current and next generation consoles as well as PC, Mac, iOS, and Android. In fact, Epic pointed out that developers can still build games for next-gen consoles using UE4 and migrate to UE5 in the future which is something the company itself will do for its own massively popular title, Fortnite.
As for the UE5 PS5 tech demo itself which is called Lumen in the Land of Nanite, it is meant to showcase two of the main technologies behind the new game engine. One of them is called Nanite which allow developers directly import high-detailed source art into the game engine with less time and no loss in quality.
Additionally, there is also Lumen which is a global illumination tool that is completely dynamic and instantly react to changes which might help game artists and designers save time during development.
While the tech demo is not a full-blown game, Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney actually stated that it is fully playable on PlayStation 5. The company’s CTO Kim Libreri also said that developers could actually try it at GDC if the event was not cancelled.
Nevertheless, it surely has provided the public a quick look at the level of graphic fidelity that the PS5 is able to churn out. However, this doesn’t mean you will be able to see UE5-based games when PS5 is released later this year though as UE5 will only be available as preview in early 2021.