The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience

[Mike Hoxbig]

The PS5 is on par with Series X as per Digital foundry, what truly blew my mind on the engine was how well it scaled on the Series S. Sure it was not as crisp/clear as the PS5 but it had all the data points, draw distance, ray tracing.

Its normally one aspect where some render engines fail, ie scalability. Sure you wont see it on a PS4 or Xbox one but that's more to do about technical limitations (Old tech) than power limitations.

This should put an end to anyone arguing that the Series S is not truly next gen. It's simply not possible on even the One X or PS4 Pro...

 

[Polymathic]

It's amazing how the more realistic the graphics how jarring the tiniest inconsistency between a real person is and CGI one triggers the uncanny valley feeling in my brain.

 

[TedLasso]

It's amazing how the more realistic the graphics how jarring the tiniest inconsistency between a real person is and CGI one triggers the uncanny valley feeling in my brain.

Indeed. I just watched the demo thing on YouTube on my big OLED and could see it as it 'deteriorated', but holy moly it's amazing what they can do now.

What is interesting is this:-
I saw an article a while back where it was said , that Jet Li, pulled out of first Matrix (as the key keeper) after nearly a year, IIRC, because the contract they wanted him to sign stated that he would be digitally rendered incl his moves and that WB could then use it ad infinitum as it would belong to them. His issue was his decades long training would then belong to someone else, as they could just replace his image with anyone else, e.g. 30 jet Li clones.

This demo shows, many actors could be close to having digital versions of themselves and that Jet Li was right to pull out at the time. I guess Keanu and Carrie have something in their contracts that their digital versions belong to them or something

But back to topic, and your comment:-

I think we can all therefore agree, that the Matrix itself (the one Neo was disconnected from) is the best gaming engine in the 'world' - billions immersed in a reality completely computer generated

Sorry it's just a tongue in cheek comment.

 

[AlphaJohn]

 

[AlphaJohn]

Indeed. I just watched the demo thing on YouTube on my big OLED and could see it as it 'deteriorated', but holy moly it's amazing what they can do now.

What is interesting is this:-
I saw an article a while back where it was said , that Jet Li, pulled out of first Matrix (as the key keeper) after nearly a year, IIRC, because the contract they wanted him to sign stated that he would be digitally rendered incl his moves and that WB could then use it ad infinitum as it would belong to them. His issue was his decades long training would then belong to someone else, as they could just replace his image with anyone else, e.g. 30 jet Li clones.

This demo shows, many actors could be close to having digital versions of themselves and that Jet Li was right to pull out at the time. I guess Keanu and Carrie have something in their contracts that their digital versions belong to them or something

But back to topic, and your comment:-

I think we can all therefore agree, that the Matrix itself (the one Neo was disconnected from) is the best gaming engine in the 'world' - billions immersed in a reality completely computer generated

Sorry it's just a tongue in cheek comment.

I do think this is gonna upset more industries than just games, like you say. Easier to "import" an actor and let them work next to a real life one than signing a large contract. This also affect "shot on scene" income. SA in specific Cape Town had a large income via Hollywood movies. Think Judge Dredd, Avengers: Age of Ultron or such.

If you can simply import an asset and let your actor do his thing on green space you dont need to fork out millions.

Ala

 

[TedLasso]

I do think this is gonna upset more industries than just games, like you say. Easier to "import" an actor and let them work next to a real life one than signing a large contract. This also affect "shot on scene" income. SA in specific Cape Town had a large income via Hollywood movies. Think Judge Dredd, Avengers: Age of Ultron or such.

If you can simply import an asset and let your actor do his thing on green space you dont need to fork out millions.

Ala

Yup. I think the Mandalorian TV series used this to great effect for season 1. They won a few awards for it. It was also with unreal.

 

[AlphaJohn]

 

[Neptuner]

I experience drops in the frame rates especially when driving the vehicles.

 

[AlphaJohn]

I experience drops in the frame rates especially when driving the vehicles.

Already taken apart by Digital foundry when it dropped:

 

[wizardofid]

Right across the map? How do you see right across the map. Probably till the edge of your POV.
Same thing already achieved in GTA 4. Max traffic slider the roads are packed.
It's not that impressive.

38 000 vehicles to me mean 38 000 types of vehicles.
If it is just vehicles you can drive with several copies in different colours of the same few vehicles, then once again. Already achieved in GTA

What exactly are they bragging about then?

Yeah you will be perfect for a senior none developmental job at a gamestudio, asking for unrealistic goals and objectives. Having been part of the game development scene for the better part of 2 decades, having worked in various engines there is nothing like unreal 5 on the market. It is literally light years ahead of any thing on the market right now.

GTA 4 even GTA 5 applies LOD to pretty much every thing in a scene.This includes texture resolution, in particular down scaling texture resolution at a fixed distance or user set distance, models also down scale to lesser quality models. It is highly optimized. 90% of the GTA 4 environment buildings can't even be entered. A good portion of textures and assets is reused to make use of instancing on GPU's, additionally improving the overall memory foot print as well as increase rendering speed.
At lot of assets gets billboarded as well.

With unreal 5, there is none of this, billboarding, texture scaling or LOD on models, it is literally what you see is what you get, no matter the distance, and while it still makes use of things like GPU instancing and a camera clipping plane, it puts any other engine to shame.

Secondly modeling 38000 different vehicles isn't practical nor economical, unless you want to spend the next 10 years just modeling cars for you game sure. There is no need to have 38000 thousand different cars in a given area as well. Hell I would be hard pressed to count 38000 different cars in a JHB traffic jam. Having cars in different textures and seeded in different positions from a selection pool on hand, is perfectly normal. A game may seed an expensive car or bike 20 times throughout the game's map and have a seed number and texture variable for every other car.

It is all about asymmetry and symmetry in the game world you design, game players all have the natural ability to see and actively or subconsciously look for patterns. The more patterns there are within the environment the less likely your are to be engaged or interested in what is being displayed on the screen.

What are they bragging about ? Not having to use a single cost saving measure you would find in any other game or game engine.If the car is 30 000 polygons 1km away it will be 30 000 polygons 5km away, the same can't be said of GTA. GTA has so many cost saving applied it is almost distracting.

 

[wizardofid]

Not 100% accurate, what Unreal 5 Engine does is take most of the work out of the designers hands and automate it eg:

In RAGE engine you manually set different models to load at different distances and times. For example:
Think of high quality assist up close.
Less accurate asset 50 meters away and
block assist at 100 meters replaced by a 2d sprite after say 1KM
So you have to make up to 4 assist for a single item.

In Unreal 5 you simply load the high detail assist and the engine does the rest and stream in detail from a single pixel to full model when you come up close with various amount of polygons based on distance. This streaming is automatic so developer can focus more on the project instead of at what distance what assist should be used and what clock cycle cost it has.

As for the 38000 cars, yes they most probably re-used the same model but the way the engine handles them each is a single data point and kept separate so that you can in fact follow each car as its own entity. Unlike other engines that spawn them in as soon as needed. IE: you can damage one and that damaged car can stay in play even if you transverse the map and come back again.

Check out: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/unreal-engine-5

No it doesn't take the work out of the designers hands, nor does it automate it. Work flow is different to that of previous gen tech.With unreal you don't have to bake texture detail like ambient occlusion as an example, nor do you have to apply things like LOD on a model.Previous gen tech you would normally bake and render a high polygon model to a low polygon model.With texture baking you would have a hard time telling the difference between a 15k and 30k model.

With unreal 5 tech you basically skip things like texture baking and polygon reduction, due to direct disk streaming and texture streaming, assets are loaded extremely quickly, only real automation comes in the form of nanite and texture resolution up and down scaling based on distance.

Data points huh ? First time I hear of calling assets data points, lol. assets in a scene is either made up with either static or dynamic assets, it has always been true that dynamic assets take more resources.It isn't a data point concerning cars, it is instancing, in this case GPU instancing, it is able to take a 100 car models and their corresponding textures load it into the memory once, and won't cost more resources other than the initial 100 cars and textures, with the exception of polygons which nanite takes care of.

Additionally the world has a prebuild navigation mesh, as well as the physics system that tells the cars where it can and can't drive and then a simple matter of a AI script that tells the cars exactly what to do if conditions are met or aren't met.
To none gamers it seems to be surrounded by a veneer of "magic" but it isn't really. Unreal changed how things are being rendered, but the basic layers of AI, navigation, physics is pretty much the same albeit updated to take full advantage of the new rendering system.

The basics of level designing and assets is more or less the same, the workflow for designing assets didn't drastically change, it still using standard physically based rendering with surface textures, there isn't significant automation in the design process it still pretty the same as before. You basically design your model, texture it, animate if needed, export import and that is basically it.The only exception being you no longer require to bake textures for example or mostly don't have to worry about polygons in the final model.

Currently I am alpha testing as well as part of the internal prealpha team for a new game engine. The current engine render infinite terrain (currently fixed to a 5KM square area for stability and alpha testing) Thanks to GPU instancing it is able to rendering 300K trees without much hassle. Plus additionally the engine is completely a realtime rendering and editing environment. Rendering vast amounts of terrain and foliage isn't something exclusive to unreal either. Sure unreal kicks up the quality without much issue to the overall performance. But other engine is more then able to make good use of instancing techniques as well as other rendering techniques.While instancing allows you to populate a generic environments like this in seconds. (took less to then 20 seconds to populate and jump in to a test game.)

What generation systems don't do is create the final level, it gives a basic level layout which still needs a considerable amount of editing to complete, automation of various aspects, like lightening, foliage, grass, rock generation ect has been around for ages, it isn't a particurally new concept, nor did unreal magically revolutionize it either. It is still using the true and trusted methods it used before, with the major changes being to how things are rendered and perhaps the production of assets and maybe how assets can be edited within unreal.Otherwise it is still pretty much run of the mill process developers with be accustom with.

 

[wizardofid]

I think we missing each other but saying the same thing?
Import asset once once and done.



At no point did I mention baking?



Data point is something not rendered but still needs to be calculated on where it is in the world.

And some other arb detail we where not even talking about, but Okay.

Sorry to be the breaker of bad news. But it isn't called a data point, never has you welcome to point to any game development documentation that refers to data points. What you get is game elements, game objects, zones, assets ect, these games elements is none polygon assets and is generally denoted via a icon with a picture or transparent boxed area.There is of course some exception like particles, decals and depends how it is rendered. When the player capsule enters a zone, activates a game elements or triggers certain conditions in the game. Like kill 100 people then next condition in the script or code is followed and if there is new conditions to be met then, it prompts what the next task is, or completes the code.

Some game elements are either active from the start or they aren't. In others words the code may be memory resident but is isn't actively queried until such time it is activated. Once completed it either is wiped from memory or is set inactive again.Keeping tract of where some thing is with in a game environment isn't particularly difficult nor does it take a tremendous amount of cpu power to keep tract of either, you can do it in the confines of a 2D or 3D coordinate system.What it does need is lots of memory, so even for unreal memory is finite so it still needs to decide what is active and what isn't active with in camera plane.There is no such thing as a data point, it is either a game element, an asset, a trigger or a zone ect.

The task isn't particularly hard one either, enough so that you can run it on a single CPU thread with various others tasks the engine is taking care.Unreal isn't particularly special in this regard either, skyrim as an example is able to remember where you place a rusty old sword on a rock on mountain top miles away.It was just the way it was designed and to be more interactive.

So a car isn't a data point it is a dynamic asset, that may broadcast its coordinates in either a 3D or 2D plane every clock cycle, 38 000 dynamic updating coordinates isn't overly complex with efficient code in place. But it should be noted the code for this was added by the developer quite a bit of additional code was added within regards to game and coordinates of objects within the game environment and not some thing unreal does natively. While it does have some default coordinate system in place. I can say with certainty it wasn't used in this demo.

Besides I was pointing what changed with regards to rendering processes of unreal, which no longer requires objects to be baked and is optional.Other points raised is perfectly fine and on topic, as people seem to think unreal is doing some thing magical.I have to give it to the marketing department, for a job well done. You seemed to be fixated on fictional "data points" for some or other reason. FYI I have been involved in game development for 20 odd years, professionally for 9 of those years. I am an asset content creator that has released and published DLC's or stock content for game engines over the years.

https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/threads/another-steam-release.995686/

 

[wizardofid]

Might not be used in game dev but its referred to data stored in either memory or disc representing an asset.

What is a data point?

Explore data points, discrete units of information. The term is equivalent to datum, the singular form of data. See how they're measured and used in various settings.

whatis.techtarget.com

Anyway... filling the thread with loads of arb crap so cool you win, whatever e-p contest your holding.

It isn't a data point. Period.Has sweet f all to do with points or data.

It is refer to a game element, it is a either a trigger as an example for external or internal code found with in the engine or external code, either via script or DDL.Data point has f all to do with a game element, a trigger, an asset or any game object for that matter. Data stored, is just that stored data, whether game elements not being rendered or a raw texture or asset file. What you do get is pointers, a pointer is basically some thing that tells whatever program is running where data is stored, ram, GPU or disk even swap file, so that game engine knows and keeps track of what is stored where in which memory address, of course the engine does have it's own pointers it wouldn't function otherwise., but again pointers has nothing to do with data points, nor is it the same thing.

Textures and models are loaded into ram or streamed from disk in this case disk and processed by GPU/CPU in a raw format easily accessible by the GPU memory for processing. Which is why you have certain industry standard graphic/asset formats and while for example DDS textures are common and extremely popular due very little resources used in processing the format and the GPU having native support for it.However it is still up to the DX/ vulkan/ openGL ect layer to pass on the information and process the information as needed. Dx is basically the communication layer between the game engine and the GPU/CPU

To the point if you were to use a dds texture vs a jpeg texture, the jpeg texture would require more resource to process as well as use more ram, it is still not called a data point it is, raw data, or rather the game element or asset or whatever it is processing in a raw format the GPU can process easy.

For example the engine I am using, support a file format of dbo, which is akin to x file format which already has the asset in a raw format making storage and processing extremely quick compared to other formats, of course it has some limitations with regards to embedding textures, animation, bones, and overall polygon count the format allows, compared to fbx as an example.

Still isnt a data point........It isn't about epeen, just so happens I do game development for a living.Not sure what is arb about talking about game engines, its processes and explaining why it isn't a data point, and pointing out what it is actually called. I would ask you what a pbr surface map is and in what channels metalness, AO, and roughness maps go and would likely call that a data point too you and would have to use google, and yes channels refers to the rgb channels of the surface texture, where you place grey scale textures of the ao, metalness and roughness maps, which a compatible shader can read, additionally you can a depth map as well, but not many shaders support the addition of that.

The car is an asset, the coordinate information broadcast, whether on a 2D or 3D plane will be required to be saved and updated akin to a temporary database if you will, that is actually data structure commonly known as an array. Data point actually refers to a point in statistical information and unit of measurement, "data point" actually has nothing to do with game engines or programing as pointed out by the link. In programming you would refer to data structures by there given name, and in this case with unreal a data array is most likely to be used, then of course you get linked, tree, or stack data structures. The object in this case the car, and the array information is still two different things. The array could get corrupted which would result in the car still being rendered but not where it is suppose to be.

Again not about epeen just so happens to be my line of work.

 

[Herr der Verboten]

Watching that and thinking back to monochrome/text games. How far we've come, or have we? Still nothing yet that was "so amazing" as to playing quake on release, flipping on that VFX1 Headgear or going from mono to stereo where you can hear the bullets on the left and right channels. I guess looking at the U5 matrix tech demo appreciating the new things it is just that?

 

[saor]

(Is there an Unreal Engine thread?)

Watching stuff like this makes me excited for the future of storytelling. Because in the same way that youtube has given people a platform to release what are becoming some of the best documentaries and film reviews and travel series etc. that are exceeding what was ever produced on traditional tv with traditional budgets and corporate approaches, tools like Unreal Engine are allowing people with good ideas to tell amazing stories and I suspect that the movies and series I'm really enjoying in a year or two aren't the big studio productions anymore but things like this - things made by people with amazing stories to tell and the availability of digital tools with which to tell those stories. There's some really cool shit on the horizon.

 

[wizardofid]

(Is there an Unreal Engine thread?)

Watching stuff like this makes me excited for the future of storytelling. Because in the same way that youtube has given people a platform to release what are becoming some of the best documentaries and film reviews and travel series etc. that are exceeding what was ever produced on traditional tv with traditional budgets and corporate approaches, tools like Unreal Engine are allowing people with good ideas to tell amazing stories and I suspect that the movies and series I'm really enjoying in a year or two aren't the big studio productions anymore but things like this - things made by people with amazing stories to tell and the availability of digital tools with which to tell those stories. There's some really cool shit on the horizon.

Big issue with unreal, is you will have to pay royalties if used in TV productions, which for a small production team could cost a pretty penny. So while the level of detail that could be used, it may not get as widely used. The engine I use and the current alpha engine I use. Has been used in several movies and popular TV series due to being completely royalty free. Having to share 5% royalties on a show/ movie. ect that gets dubbed and sold in many countries, and will have varying degrees of repeat airtime, will likely discourage wide use.

 

[saor]

Big issue with unreal, is you will have to pay royalties if used in TV productions, which for a small production team could cost a pretty penny. So while the level of detail that could be used, it may not get as widely used. The engine I use and the current alpha engine I use. Has been used in several movies and popular TV series due to being completely royalty free.

Eh, if it's cutting down on capital outlay to produce something I think a lot of small independents won't really care much. Youtube takes an even bigger cut (40 odd% unless its changed recently) of ad revenue and it sucks for a lot of people, but it's hardly a deterrent from using the platform. Well maybe it is, but regardless I still benefit from a lot of quality youtube content. Unreal also only imposes the 5% after 1 million in total revenue afaik. So hardly a 'big issue' and enough people will still use it that the rest of us will still benefit from a lot of quality content just like with yt.

Having to share 5% royalties on a show/ movie. ect that gets dubbed and sold in many countries, and will have varying degrees of repeat airtime, will likely discourage wide use.

All this 90's media jargon I don't understand. Was more talking about people streaming their creations on platforms like youtube, not studios selling their productions like old-school media.

 

[wizardofid]

Eh, if it's cutting down on capital outlay to produce something I think a lot of small independents won't really care much. Youtube takes an even bigger cut (40 odd% unless its changed recently) of ad revenue and it sucks for a lot of people, but it's hardly a deterrent from using the platform. Well maybe it is, but regardless I still benefit from a lot of youtube content. Unreal also only imposes the 5% after 1 million in total revenue afaik. So hardly a 'big issue'.


All this 90's media jargon I don't understand. I'm talking about people streaming their creations on platforms like youtube. I'm not talking about studios selling their productions like old-school media.

Well it where it has the most use.Streaming some thing live, on game creation front or any thing else created is generally some that doesnt happen often.While people do upload what they create or the creating process it isn't some thing people generally stream as it still takes hours to create some thing.More often then not what people do post is is sped up footage, unreal 5 isn't going to change how things work now or in the future.

While unreal 5 has some pretty great graphics, it still isn't any where near close to what one can render in the likes of blender or maya for example, or with a dedicated rendering tool. It still has limitations, dedicated tool beats it still and will for a good while.Unreal still has to apply cost saving measures, in blender, max, or maya or any dedicated rendering software renders per frame, over several hours, with zero compromises, physics, lightening and general graphics can't be beat.While you are able to create some thing pretty awesome things with unreal, it still has significant limitations which may be undesirable and lack the flexibility and control.Unreal isn't even close to the physics related simulations that can be achieved in the likes of blender or maya, especially with things like hair, sub surface scattering of light to be perfectly honestly is average.If you watch the video closely, there isn't a lot of it.

True and trusted methods aren't going away any time soon. A dedicated tool is still better than tool that does a bit of that and a bit of this. Unreal 5 will have it's uses, if you going to do all that effort why not do it properly and why do it with a sword hanging over your head, use blender as an example which is completely free and designed with animation and rendering in mind.

Blender just kicks ass, it isn't necessarily about photo realism either

Seriously....mind blown

 

[saor]

Well it where it has the most use.Streaming some thing live, on game creation front or any thing else created is generally some that doesnt happen often.While people do upload what they create or the creating process it isn't some thing people generally stream as it still takes hours to create some thing.More often then not what people do post is is sped up footage, unreal 5 isn't going to change how things work now or in the future.

Ja jeez I wasn't using stream in the literal sense of realtime rendering. I just meant people are going to stream (play, screen, share whatever) their creations on platforms like youtube.

While unreal 5 has some pretty great graphics, it still isn't any where near close to what one can render in the likes of blender or maya for example, or with a dedicated rendering tool. It still has limitations, dedicated tool beats it still and will for a good while.Unreal still has to apply cost saving measures, in blender, max, or maya or any dedicated rendering software renders per frame, over several hours, with zero compromises, physics, lightening and general graphics can't be beat.While you are able to create some thing pretty awesome things with unreal, it still has significant limitations which may be undesirable and lack the flexibility and control.Unreal isn't even close to the physics related simulations that can be achieved in the likes of blender or maya, especially with things like hair, sub surface scattering of light to be perfectly honestly is average.If you watch the video closely, there isn't a lot of it.

True and trusted methods aren't going away any time soon. A dedicated tool is still better than tool that does a bit of that and a bit of this. Unreal 5 will have it's uses, if you going to do all that effort why not do it properly and why do it with a sword hanging over your head, use blender as an example which is completely free and designed with animation and rendering in mind.

I'm not saying Unreal is better. I'm just excited about new tools like this that give people more flexibility and approaches to telling stories. But I'd still say that importing assets into Unreal and letting the engine deal with a lot of the physics etc. is less of a learning curve than having to rig a lot of things by hand in blender.

https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/threads/blender-2-8-is-out.1040143/

 

[wizardofid]

Ja jeez I wasn't using stream in the literal sense of realtime rendering. I just meant people are going to stream (play, screen, share whatever) their creations on platforms like youtube.

I'm not saying Unreal is better. I'm just excited about new tools like this that give people more flexibility and approaches to telling stories. But I'd still say that importing assets into Unreal and letting the engine deal with a lot of the physics etc. is less of a learning curve than having to rig a lot of things by hand in blender.

https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/threads/blender-2-8-is-out.1040143/

They already share and have been sharing on youtube for ages.


Well you still need to rig it regardless of whether you are going to use it in unreal or blender, facial animations for example still requires build all the bones for the rig. Unreal allows editing of the bones. A lot of rigging is automatic with basics animation so not really all that time consuming, considering you export a rig and apply it to some thing else it isn't really that. So whether you use blender or unreal it makes little difference as in either on you going to have edit the animated frames of the rig. The upside of using blender is you can edit adjust and add new frames quite quickly and far easier then unreal. Either way you going to spend over 80% of your time in blender/ maya ect creating the content for the unreal engine thing you want to do.

Each one has their positive and negative, the thing is if you going to use unreal, you are going to have to learn some thing like blender regardless so why not stick to a tool that just does it much better. Unreal doesn't automatically make you game developer or content creator, you either going to have to learn a program like blender or spend a small fortune on content already created. 3D content is going to set you back thousands if you don't do it your self. Down side is you going to have to do an insane amount of coding in unreal too, some in blender as well.But it is entirely possible to animate and render a scene in blender without a single line of code, the same can't be said for unreal.

it is a bit counter intuitive learning blender to create content to use in unreal to animate a small video clip as an example, why not just do it in blender in the first place you will be a 100% better content creator for doing it that way.