Watch Unreal 5's Seriously Impressive MegaLights Tech Demo, Running on a PS5

It does look impressive, I still have the Matrix demo on my PS5 which looks phenomenal and playable which is hopefully a taste of what is to come!!

Can I just pretend this is the first footage of Uncharted 5.

Looks superb but the last two tech demos have yet to be realised in games so I don't appreciate the blue balls tbh

Amazing. But the gameplay is what had me glued to my seat in awe

Nice, but will we actually get to see this kind of detail in 4K at above 10 FPS in actual releases on our PS5?

Wow. Graphics that finally look next generation.

More the pity however that it comes at a time when the PS6 is already in development. But if this is the standard that we can expect from it from year 1 then it is already a massive step up in quality from the PlayStation 4.5.

I would have imagine the cyberpunk sequel will be using this a lot 🤔

I need this demo to be a game especially it's set in Arabic world!

Yeah it looks good n all but how close have we come with any game that looks like or has the physics of the Matrix demo? None. A small tech demo is 1 thing but implementing that in to a full blown game is something else. Especially when you think that production time would end up being even longer on games and they are too long as it is.

I need to fiddle around with this Megalights addition, I have a few portfolio environments that would shine with this working in them.

will there be a remake of this demo for the PS5pro?

Only 2 years are left in this current gen...

@Can-You-Believe-Sith Funnily enough Cyberpunk was my first thought when I saw this, must be the lighting or something as it is moody and Night City was dripping with atmosphere and cool lighting. I can't wait for the sequel!!

@SamMR At the current rate, the PS4 might outlast the PS5. How funny would that be?

What happen to lumen, I remember that unreal 5 feature get hyped by epic but I think there's no game that used it yet.

@SamMR With ps5 pro at least we're getting another 4 year, not including additional 2 years because of covid. So maybe we'll get another 6 year of ps5/ps5 pro.

Also I think publishers will be bankrupt if they still chase high-end graphics, or at least publishers in the usa since developing games is so expensive in there. Just like making smartphone, at some point it's not feasible to make single player AAA games on western country anymore.

Can't wait to bathe in ad panels at a random Cyberpunk alley and blinding myself in HDR mega-nits. ✨🤩

Too bad japanese companies dont use western engine and prefer the old way. Starting to see chinese, korean, us and western companies use unreal engine 5 so it looks really good.

@1UP-HUSKY
I do wish it was Uncharted 5, so want another Uncharted game.

Strong Uncharted Lost Legacy vibes!

If it can run in game locked at 60fps or above, then it looks fantastic, if not its (at present) just a waste of time - another "look what it can do in a demo but not in game" scenario.

Now, if they had shown a demo of a new version of UE5 that didnt eat GPU's and CPU's like they were junk food whilst giving only modest output, that would be an amazing use of time.

Tech demos is nice, but as usual, we never get this high quality graphics, in actual games, because it's too demanding.

@Steel76 Although I won't say you're wrong, this is running on a PS5, which is a much better demo than a PC demo since the hardware is so restrictive.

That's impressive. Much as I've been unhappy with Epic with the so far disaster that is UE5.0 and Fortnite, got to admit they basically just declared that after years and thousands of dollars in hardware per gamer, we don't need RT anymore... Which devs may groan about but every gamer should cheer relentlessly about getting their fps back.

Would love to render my dong light in this.

@wiiware Its a supplement to, not a replacement for Lumen. Lumen is a solution for indirect illumination and reflections. Megalights handles the direct illumination and shadowing of a large numbers of lights. Same as RTXDI requires a supplementary GI solver.

Also, there are a number of UE5 titles already using lumen. Lords of the Fallen, The First Descendent, Wu Kong, etc.

@NEStalgia i think you're confused. Raytracing, broadly speaking, is a class of algorithms. Hardware raytracing is dedicated silicone on GPUs that accelerates the notoriously computationally intensive aspects of raytracing. Both lumen and megalights are raytracing and can exploit hardware RT. Megalights straight up requires it. Lumen has a "software RT" mode that exclusively traces against a simplified scene representation, removing the need for hardware accelerated ray-triangle intersections at the cost of quality.

Time Ghost Unity 6 demo is better I think

https://youtu.be/o1JIK5W3DRU?feature=shared

@Weez Ohhh, I thought metalights whole point was a software rendering alternative to RT. Especially since the had it running well on PS5 which has poor acceleration for RT.

Cool, but we’ll be out of this generation by the time any game comes out using this.

@torquex That's a (meticulously crafted) cinematic running at 30fps on a 4900/14900k, so 6+ times slower. It is likely to appeal to the virtual production crowd (much like Unreal 4 did with Rebirth, 5 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fC20NWhx4s). This tech-demo is showcasing hundreds of dynamic, ray-traced lights on consumer hardware at 60FPS, where previously one was limited to a handful before performance plummeted.

@NEStalgia It's been available via source builds for some time. As it stands, it currently requires HW raytracing support and is decoupled, superficially at least, from GI method. I've been meaning to take a look at the actual implementation, but work has had other ideas. I'm guessing it's a novel approach to importance (re)sampling - something similar to ReSTIR.

tldr; HW acceleration is concerned with speeding up the tracing - the calculation of ray-triangle intersections required to model light transport and maintaining the acceleration structures to do it at scale. This is more about minimizing the number of traces required while maximizing the relevant "information" acquired from each trace, if that makes sense.

Yeah this is great stuff, This engine keeps getting new killer features.

Still it's a heavy engine and while this demo works on PS5, it's a different story getting Nanite, Lumen and this Megalight working together in a game I imagine.

Especially more Open-World like games.

That being said, I am looking very much forward to next gen, even more after watching this.

@Weez This tech-demo is showcasing hundreds of dynamic, ray-traced lights on consumer hardware at 60FPS

That is impressive if I'm honest. Bend Studio did a great job with Unreal Engine 4 for Days Gone; I wish Sony would fund another project for this studio, not necessarily a sequel but something similar. I think they would do brilliant with Unreal Engine 5.

@Weez Thanks, great explanation and it made total sense! I've not been a fan of how UE5 has turned out which felt like 3 steps backward, but it seems like it's finally shaping up with some good stuff.

@wiiware you are optimistic af, since Microsoft is supposedly trying to get a head start on Sony, they are aiming for a 2026 release window. Sony on the other hand, will have to release theirs in 2027