| Thanks to HN, I checked it out on my PS5 tonight. Very impressive. The thing that immediately jumped out at me was the 24fps target. The demo has a cinematic feeling, and thus the 24fps framerate feels “correct.” Compared to 60fps, you can do a lot more when you have 2.5x as much time per frame. The first part is a CGI representation of Keanu and Carrie-Anne. I was shocked at the quality; it had “the demoscene feel,” if you know what I mean - “I did not know the hardware could do that.” Artists going full OCD, just because it was the right thing to do. Great work. Parts of it had that CGI feeling, but most of the first two minutes, I swear I was watching video and not CG. Part 2: the city tour. I am not sure if there’s a detailed YouTube video of same, but the artists used some clever tricks, as any good 3D artist would. You can fly around and peer into offices and apartments through their windows. There are a limited number of static rooms, and they use frosted glass to blur the details. Interiors are fully modeled and there is parallax through the glass. HVAC units on rooftops are robust, down to the warning messages. Great use of LOD. I saw Z-fighting and LOD “popping” when surveying the city from on high. I walked away from this (um, got up from the sofa) thinking Epic’s gambit is to push Unreal Engine 5 as a virtual movie set. They went all out on the character models in the first part, with Keanu and Carrie-Anne. There were a few uncanny valley shots (“dead eyes”) but very impressive overall. Some of the shots could be taken as a reference, or gold standard. Even more impressive is that it’s running on a (loss leader) $600 Sony PS5. |
The demo runs capped at 24fps? That has to feel almost unplayable in an interactive setting? A dip below 30 in an interactive first person perspective is usually pretty disturbing.