Epic Games has just released a PlayStation 5 Unreal Engine 5 tech demo that gives us our first look at what Sony’s next-gen console will be capable of.
The PlayStation 5 Unreal Engine 5 tech demo is called Lumen in the land of Nanite.
The strange name actually refers to the new technology Epic has implemented in Unreal Engine 5. Nanite is “virtualized micropolygon geometry that frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see”.
The technology allows for “film-quality source art comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons can be imported directly into Unreal Engine—anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans to CAD data”.
In the words of Epic, it’s art that just works. Lumen, as the name suggests, is a technology that focuses on in-game lighting which immediately changes and reacts to light changes in a scene.
The technology will allow developers to create more dynamic and realistically illuminated scenes. Artists will be able to move a light inside the Unreal Editor and experience the lighting in the same way a gamer would on their console.
This new technology will help developers create more detailed and realistic worlds in a shorter amount of time.
It’s great to get a sneak peek at what the future holds for game developers, and gamers. What has many fans excited is the fact that the demo was, as was confirmed by Epic, running on a Playstation 5, which is the first taste we’ve gotten of what the console will be capable of.
It’s quite astonishing.