The future of video game consoles is almost here, and Unreal has just given us our first look at Unreal Engine 5, and what this engine can do in order to make games look more photorealistic than ever before; providing players with an even more immersive experience.
"Lumen in the Land of Nanite" is the next-gen demo running in real-time on Sony's highly anticipated, and yet-to-be-revealed PlayStation 5, and it is a testament to what the next generation console is capable of doing from a technical standpoint.
Epic Games Technical Director of Graphics and Art Director — Brian Karis and Jerome Platteaux, respectively — give us a tonne of information about Unreal Engine and how they've managed to achieve those jaw-dropping photorealistic graphics.
These two new core technologies are actually in the demo's name: Nanite and Lumen, which allows developers to add even more geometric detail to games, and also provide proper dynamic illumination that is described to reacto to scene and light changes.
The "Lumen in the Land of Nanite" demo is also using technology present in Unreal Engine 4.25, such as Niagara VFX and Chaos physics, which are properly shown in the demo when the scene's terrain crumbles piece by piece — while, at the same time, spatialised audio is used to create an even more immersive experience.
While some of the information revealed by the developers of the "Lumen in the Land of Nanite" demo is too technical, the video speaks for itself, and players will still be able to tell just how breathtakingly beautiful everything looks.
Check it out: