Epic Games’ outstanding Matrix Awakens tech demo has already given us a taste of what to expect from Unreal Engine 5 on the PS5, but this viral video has pulses racing all over social media. The clip, which is based on a real-life Japanese train station, was uploaded to Art Station earlier in the week, and has been shared thousands of times since.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t actually running in real-time – it was rendered at about seven frames-per-second and then sped up. While the creator admits it’s possible to run it at real-time, the image quality takes a big hit. However, they admit that further optimisation could result in improved performance.
Really, though, the takeaway here is just how photorealistic everything looks. The video description explains: “The environment is running in Unreal Engine 5, lit with Lumen. I didn't use Nanite. I worked on all modelling, texturing, lighting, and animation for this video. The only exception is foliage, which is from Quixel Megascans.”
It really is rather impressive, and with a bunch of Sony teams working with Unreal Engine 5 – including the likes of Haven Studios – we’re guaranteed to be in for a treat as the generation matures.
[source artstation.com]
Comments 56
Wow. Very impressive.
And good points in the article too - In 4 or 5 years time on PS5 we're going to be seeing some very special stuff.
Personally I can't wait to see where this generation goes.
@Shepherd_Tallon I remember we said that about PS4 ten years ago.
Can’t wait. I mean you look at the games at the start of any gen and then fast forward 4 years and the difference is mind blowing
At this rate with Sony bleeding every last dollar it can from the PS4, we won't get games like this consistently for another 10 years.
Considering cross-gen is killing the advancement of games we won’t see the potential of current gen games until the PS6.
@Ken_Kaniff Preach.
@nyXhc420 tbh we did get some very good looking games.
TLOU 2,uncharted 4,HZD,red dead redemption 2 etc.
That's incredible. PS6 graphics confirmed for games that will take 5 years to develop.
I've been seeing mind-blowing tech demos since... Well, I'm pretty sure since I started paying attention to gaming. None of it ever matters that much. Mega Man X still looks beautiful, as does Banjo-Kazooie, Halo: Combat Evolved, Super Mario Galaxy, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and undoubtedly half the games on the Playdate going forward. Seeing something like this just makes me think VR is going to be indistinguishable from reality soon enough, something I could've already guessed.
Gaming is an art form first and a technical display second. Or third — it's rather low, wherever it may be. And the closer games get to this kinda fidelity, the more it'll have to move away from reliance on polygon count to be of any worth.
I’m very sceptical of this kind of thing. PS5 can’t really even handle 4K 60fps in most games. Very disappointing to choose one or the other.
Wish this was Silent Hill new chapter
That looks amazing. Why we need to keep pushing hardware forward - PS5/XSX/3090/6900XT/3800x3D... are great, and we need to keep going!
Great time to be a Digital Artist.
Removed - inappropriate
@nyXhc420
This.
Its one thing to do a tech demo, its another to make an actual functioning game.
Graphics
Framerate
Computer AI
Menu systems
Framerate
Player Input
Once you start factoring all that in, the graphics fidelity will have to be lowered.
Same way we had the FF7 tech demo on PS3 but no PS3 game came close to looking like that
Now *that in VR would be amazing. Looking froward to it in the next two decades finally happening!!
Actual games never look as good as tech demos.
We won't see this in an actual game for a decade.
Big deal. My Casio watch in 1983 ran this demo. This version doesn’t even have Donkey Kong as a playable boss fight.
Keep hearing about the future yet the ps5 has been out nearly 2 years & I'm not impressed at all!! Where's the exclusives? We had 2 last year then nothing?
@MB81 the ps5 is disappointing so far its not that different from the pro
This is super stellar, I thought the start was real footage and that it was going to transition into the engine partway through. That said, for all its beauty, I’m personally into more stylized games, and I’d love to see what can be done with UE5 in that regard (Please, I need UE5 Jet Set Radio)
Well this looks insane, BUT, when everything is looking like the reality in the future why not going there and have other things like wind, smell and the feelings and so on? It's great when it works that way, but at some point you can no longer distinguish reality from the game and I find that dangerous. In addition, you don't have to exert your imagination at all anymore. When I think back to games like Doom 1 or Wolfenstein 3D etc., which had really bad graphics, the gameplay was much more immersive there, because you had to exert your imagination more and were therefore more "pulled" into the game. Possibilities are great but not always 100% useful in my eyes.
Nice..would love to see a fps game use this engine as it could be epic (no pun intended) and i'd love to see more positive comments about potential game changing tech..
People saying we haven’t had decent stuff on the PS5. We’ve also had hardly any PS5 only games and we’re so early in its cycle still. Give it a coupe of years folks. It’ll come..
Well it’s lovely but I’m not sure it deserves an article tbh. Especially people turn that random video into negativity against PS5 for some weird reason. 😅
(Probably comes from title ‘PS5 fans hope’, ‘glimpse into the future, a taste’ which is a bit silly in my opinion. It’s funny how people go into suggested perspectives).
Meanwhile Elden Ring frame rate suffers. Let’s be honest, we won’t achieve this on ps5 in a playable state. Nice to have a goal though
@Ryany
I think you mean the games aren’t that different, the hardware is certainly a huge leap. We’ve just been held back by devs not committing to current gen because the hardware couldn’t be produced in large enough quantities to make it commercially viable. Also, U5 hasn’t even been fully developed yet.
The real next gen is VR for me anyway. Slightly more real scenes in pancake mode won’t be a big deal when realised.
A lot of people seriously forgetting how incredible TLOU Part II was looking on a PS4.
Hold my beer I've.. had enough I reckon. Gotta tackle this stairs
@itsfoz I mean we're 2.5 years into the PS5 now and theres literally a handful of PS5 only games, yes world events etc etc But we wont be seeing anything like this on a PS5 or even what it can even achieve until PS4 games are stopped being made and that doesnt look like happening anytime soon unfortunately.
@HeeHo its the realistic footage that woos the casuals, and fly by nights. But will it survive the motion sickness complaints
@nyXhc420 I don't think any of us are expecting to see visuals quite as good as what we're seeing in this video, but as @jdv95 notes, games across the later half of last gen looked really good.
The second half of this gen will be exciting with regards to visuals and physics.
As for myself, I love these tech demos. We all know we won't see the same performance in our games any time soon, and it's usually the following generation where games actually surpass the demo (ff7 tech demo, Kara tech demo), but when you've been gaming as long as some of us have it doesn't seem like that long of a wait.
@PaperAlien 12th November 2020 wasn't 2 and a half years ago mate
@Shepherd_Tallon
Hi man. Yes mostly agree with what your saying but it would be nice to at least know what hardware this is from, right?
All the negativity I see here seems really pointless to me.
@JJ2 I thought it was PC hardware, but I don't know where that assumption came from now that I think about it.
And yes, I agree. Last week some of us were complaining to Push Square that their articles were very negative.
This week they're more positive, but the community seems negative 😂
You can't win.
This does look incredible.
The Matrix demo was cool and all, but actually, I was underwhelmed when I finally played it and it didn't blow me away graphically. Obviously it wasn't the point, but the gameplay was so dull that I didn't really take a look around the open world bit.
I want new generation to mean that we can go into all the buildings and interact way more with the world.
It's really cool for developers that they can create all that very quickly, but it needs to be refined more to make it worth playing.
This is more like a PS7 stuff, maybe. Anyone expecting to see anything close to this on PS5 is simply delusional.
@Shepherd_Tallon
Yea I mean PC but it’s quite vague to get an idea.
This article could have been more neutral in not presenting it as ‘hope’ for PS5 future and inevitably triggering frustration tbh
What absolute nonsense, were 20 years away from this kind of graphical fidelity in console gaming, in a working playable format,these graphic demos have been doing the rounds for decades and they never deliver.
Not really plausible for a game, but it is amazing. Feels so real. Quite an achievement in itself, to reproduce a real setting to such a realistic degree.
@Ken_Kaniff We've NEVER got games that look at the same quality as the best engine trailers or demos till ten years later, this has nothing to do with cross gen. Go back 10 years and look at things like the Luminous Agni's Philosophy or Unreal Engine 3's Samaritan trailers. These came out during PS3/X360 gen and we're only just reaching those sort of levels now 10 years later. A few things we do better now, a few things we're STILL not at that level.
@tallythwack Exactly. Although that was what was so impressive about the recent Matrix demo to me, it was actually running in real time on home console not some uber-workstation.
When the PS6 drops this will be exciting stuff
Sorry but I really don't like ultra realistic graphics. If I'd want realism I'd go outside. Creative art styles are much more interesting imo
@ShadowofSparta
That’s not a hardware limitation. That’s FromSoftware’s janky ass engine.
The game stutters and turns in less than expected framerates on a RTX3090.
@mariomaster96
To me it depends on the game.
I would love to see a World War II setting with visuals of this quality.
This is probably running on a high-end PC and already rendered. Developers already have the technology to create ultra-realistic graphics. But why would they do it when only a small percentage of people could run it. It is just not commercially viable right now. But the future of gaming in terms of graphics is exciting though. I think Sony is one of the few gaming publisher who prioritize graphics over anything else.
@Ken_Kaniff Not sure why put hate on Sony lol. You do realize Xbox one is still being sold also. You act like Sony is the only one with a last gen console. Also just because PS4 is still being sold doesn't have anything to do with ps5 game upcoming exclusive strictly for ps5 not looking amazing. Gotham knights is only for next gen.
@Don_Corleone Well if this was an Xbox site and I had their console they would be included as well. As far as games being cross gen not effecting how it it looks and plays is completely false. Gotham Knights just canceled its PS4/Xbox versions, but that game was built on the foundation of those consoles. Thats why the Justice League game looks a helleva lot better because it was built with a next gen console foundation.
I mean 7fps and then sped up is nothing to applaud BUT as you know, if you know anything about gaming that is, when some new tech launches whether that be a new gen console a new game engine etc the first stuff that is demo’d on it is like a drop in the ocean of what it will become in a mere handful of years. In other words this video doesn’t do anything for me other than signify what’s coming in the next 5 years or less. And that I am excited for because it’s going to make this video look sad in comparison 👌
Looks very realistic, this is good news!
@Ryany hmmm perhaps the global supply chain problem and pandemic effected things [sarcasm font]
It is a glimpse of the future, just not the PS5's future. That level of fidelity won't be possible at an acceptable frame rate on current gen consoles. An early look at PS6 graphics perhaps though.
@themightyant At 24fps with big dips even lower though. They've got some serious optimization to do before actual games can even look that good.
That said I'm sure we can look forward to some amazing things in the near future.
@mariomaster96 Couldn't agree more, I actually find stuff like Uncharted, Last of Us, Horizon and Spiderman more convincing BECAUSE they are stylised. It creates a consistent world that your brain adapts to very quickly, when you seek absolute realism every tiny thing that's not 100% right sticks out like a sore thumb and snaps your mind back to reality when you see it.
@MasterTonberry Agreed with all you points. I think re: UE5 Matrix the point of that demo was it was made by a pretty small team in a relatively small amount of time considering the size and scope of it. For that alone it was impressive at that fidelity.
Though yes it needs optimisation and personally I prefer smaller more curated worlds but it will definitely empower smaller teams.
Also agreed it's a glimpse into the future but not this gen really, but sooner than some of the previous gen demos that only ran on monster PCs and we still haven't hit that level.
@Ken_Kaniff only because supply constraints. My friend can’t even get a steam deck.
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