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The Coalition UE5 demo at GDC

Lethal01

Member
The Global Illumination(lumen) is the most likely cause for why the demo is running at such a lower resolutions and fps.
Nanites triangle handling makes poly count almost irrelevant (part of why its magic) and textures arent going to be too much of an issue when you can replace a whole bunch of maps with triangles.

Lumen looks amazing but it currently costs a ton on consoles, 60fps is still some ways away.

What I would like to see is if Enlighten have any sort of nextgen update to their lighting tech.
Maybe integrate Enlighten Vx into Unreal Engine while still using Nanite because they were able to get to 60fps on consoles a while ago.

Nanite is still fucking magic, but Lumen is currently just a bit too expensive for me to back just yet.
Dunno if the virtual shadow maps require Lumen or not, but it really is expensive right now and we will have to rely on lower resolutions to get to 60fps.....let alone attempting to hit 120fps.
Given time im sure they will get Lumen to an exceptional level.....but at this point if you can get away with RTGI then just use RTGI.

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If the point you're trying to make is that Lumen isn't worth it then those pictures were a terrible choice(also one of them is just totally black)
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
If the point you're trying to make is that Lumen isn't worth it then those pictures were a terrible choice(also one of them is just totally black)

Dunno why the gif isnt working, ill try reuploading it.

But yes I was trying to point out that if you are actually trying to hit 60fps the gains in quality lumen brings isnt quite up to snuff if you are going to be forced to not only drop res but also drop framerate.

I think it looks brilliant but is it worth running games at ~40fps and drop res to 1440p/1080p.
In a generation when people are hunting 60fps i dont think Lumen is ready yet.
For devs who are going for 30fps then Lumen is legit brilliant lighting tech.
 
Last year's demo was running at 1440p30, using the same temporal upscaling and was hardlocked to 30FPS, but most likely had a similar headroom. I have no idea how much more optimized the engine can get in the next year or two, but I guess that's what we have to prepare ourselves for on the consoles if we want those level of graphics - upscaled QHD 30FPS, maybe 40Hz/unlocked+VRR options for people with 120Hz displays. But to achieve 60FPS, let alone 120, I think it's safe to say we will have to say goodbye for such detailed assets, and especially Lumen will have to get seriously toned down as that's what eats most GPU power in UE5.

Maybe ML-powered upscaling can do the trick? The platforms support FSR, but I'm under the impression the Series systems in particularly have lower-level (i.e below FP16) math precision and hardware-powered DirectML customizations on those systems.

We've already heard some MS studios are working with ML and image upscaling techniques; even if they are not up to DLSS 2.0 or whatever, I'd like to think with the hardware features and the resources available to them, they can get some really impressive upscaling of low-resolution targets while maintaining detail or doing even better than native resolution, within a couple years or so.

That way they can have enough frame budget to still target 60 while having detail at the level of this demo or the other UE5 demos, and upscaled resolution to maybe 1800p from a 720p native, then reconstruct that up to 4K. I'm optimistic there are pathways for these talented AAA studios to do this, and for The Coalition in particular, I'd be more surprised if they couldn't given how proficient they are with optimizing Unreal tech.
 

JackMcGunns

Member
You're conflating so many different events into one, imagining the internet as one big voice that's speaking all in unison for or against a topic, and that's silly.

Sure, there were Sony fans who were claiming the first UE5 demo as proof of their consoles strength that MS didn't answer back at (which is lame on their part since UE5 is always meant to play on this generation of consoles and it wasn't "secret sauce" in the SSD or anything else that brought that demo to life.) Those are those people, and they've got something wrong with their sense of understanding. There's no reason to obsess over UE5 as a battleground of these two consoles. They will both play UE5 games (and so will Switch and your phone, albeit at greatly reduced specs and with no Lumen or Nanite,) and there's nothing that's been said about work with Unreal Engine on either console that says they run the engine any better or worse than the other (albeit PS was the only console to have shown it for that first year, but Xbox was shown in May and then today and tomorrow will be a kind of milestone in Xbox history of having a UE5 demo showcased on its hardware and having all of that bullshit fully put to rest.)


I rest my case then, I was referring to that circle of jerks. Many still believe that only the PS5 SSD would be able to handle UE5 at full quality, that image quality would need to be reduced for Series X because of its slower SSD.

The persecution complex thing is overused. :messenger_squinting_tongue:
 

CamHostage

Member
It’s effectively, benchmarking the hardware and scoping what you can do as a team. Benchmark triangle throughput per frame for example .

But we should be way, way past that point by now. Benchmarking the hardware, that was 2020 work.

Epic Game would have long ago run the X/S hardware through its paces, and although they haven't published much specific to the consoles, they would have shared some of that data to MS and to close partners like Coalition and Ninja Theory. Heck, we in this thread already know some of these numbers from previous Epic showings and talks, and we're not elite game developers (well, I'm not, are you?) Coalition getting to make its own Alpha Point demo and saying, "Yep, it does what they say," that's good for them, but that's a little light for a GDC presentation to a room full of developers who, if they haven't done it themselves, are just a click away from getting UE5 EA and doing work in it themselves.

Mostly the differences here are, it's professional artists' original work instead of the usual kitbashed Quixel Bridge material, it's a top-tier professional developer close to the engine producer (and target console manufacturer) showing its work with the technology instead of a home-bound single coder, and it's running on an Xbox Series X.

Coalition brought some of that difference to bear in the presentation (and we've heard "performant at 30FPS on consoles" from Epic, but yesterday the public saw it on a real Xbox.) Alls I'm saying is that, for a center-stage moment, I did expect that experience and level of access to be pertinent and on display in this presentation.

But if Coalition, the close partner Epic picked to showcase UE5 at a developers conference, if it really doesn't have any more experience with UE5 than the average joe kicking around that widely-available preview build (which would be a bizarre way to roll out professionally licensed engine, and also doesn't jibe at all with various studios' talks about evaluating the technology, including Coalition, but lets just pretend Epic is really that diplomatic,) then we may be in for a long wait for consumer titles making good use of the technology...

(*I see XSX SDK listed as supported but it's unclear if a developer can actually compile a UE5 EA project for a console devkit yet?)
 
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because that's not how Nanite works lmfao. It's taking that source asset of super high polygon counts and generating dynamics LODs essentially on the fly. It's not rendering 100 Billion polygons every frame.

The entire demo had about 100 billion triangles of source geometry altogether and the demo running on PS5 was rendering 20 million triangles per frame at a dynamic 1440p (internal render resolution) resolution at 30FPS.

Of course not. But it says this demo has over 100 mil. triangles, UE5 demo has much, much more

ncuVT2Q.png
 

CamHostage

Member
the reason no one in their right mind would use it(Beyond playing around to see the latest feature) is because it's highly unstable. So obviously you would use the stable version of the engine. Source ue5 has a shit ton of features that early access ue5 doesn't have yet, since those features are actively being worked on and could break, change, just not work or be scraped tomorrow a studio isn't going to use it.

Game development in the prototype phase is always highly unstable and always apt to be broken by software changes. You still have to get started somewhere. And you don't want to let the competition (which apparently is everybody who downloaded UE5 EA two months ago, going by this assertion that nobody touched UE5 until a stable version was released...) get too far ahead. If you're all staffed up with a project that's shipping this Christmas and you don't have time for exploratory work, that's one thing. But they're not even building a game here; they're evaluating technology, and they're running prototypes to provide feedback and optimization recommendations on the software itself, in part to help get it to become stable. If you're friend Epic Games has a new tool it's hammering out and you're allowed to come over to the shop and get a feel for it, you don't just say, "Naw, call me when it's stable..."

Now, granted, this UE5 GDC presentation was primarily an artist-focused showcase, not a CTO presentation of really pushing the technology hard, but the tech is wrapped up in the art production, and this was a public prototype presentation by a professional studio. It's not some "UE5 101" covering the basics by a part-timer.
 
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hevy007

Banned
Game development in the prototype phase is always highly unstable and always apt to be broken by software changes. You still have to get started somewhere. And you don't want to let the competition (which apparently is everybody who downloaded UE5 EA two months ago, going by this assertion that nobody touched UE5 until a stable version was released...) get too far ahead. If you're all staffed up with a project that's shipping this Christmas and you don't have time for exploratory work, that's one thing. But they're not even building a game here; they're evaluating technology, and they're running prototypes to provide feedback and optimization recommendations on the software itself, in part to help get it to become stable. If you're friend Epic Games has a new tool it's hammering out and you're allowed to come over to the shop and get a feel for it, you don't just say, "Naw, call me when it's stable..."

Now, granted, this UE5 GDC presentation was primarily an artist-focused showcase, not a CTO presentation of really pushing the technology hard, but the tech is wrapped up in the art production, and this was a public prototype presentation by a professional studio. It's not some "UE5 101" covering the basics by a part-timer.
You need to read, i said the Early access IS the stable version of UE5 (that's what the people were using to make Valley of the ancients, i've been following along on UDN for months now) and the Source is not because it's in constant development. They used the EARLY ACCESS build not the source build with the latest features, jesus christ.

Game dev in the prototype stage is only unstable if you're using an unstable engine, i don't even know what you mean by that. If i were to prototype with Unreal 4.26 or 4.27 would i be prototyping with an unstable engine? obviously not. They weren't prototyping either, what they was a quick tech analysis with the EARLY ACCESS! say it with me now, version of the engine.

Just to reiterate since you just don't seem to get it,,there are TWO count it TWO versions of UE5, EA and Source...Source is the latest greatest but not to be used beyond playing around because it's going to crash, not work etc etc....EA is the version of the Engine that was out in the wild prior to being available to the public...that's what i was talking about. So when the poster was wondering if they had access to some future version of the engine with features not available to anyone, the answer is no...they have access to the Source version of the engine with the latest features not yet available in the EA version and that's it.
 

Buggy Loop

Member
He's left like most of the devs on here. Most people like to get knowledge on these kinds things, but there's always console warriors that just shit up the place, and knowledgeable ppl end up leaving in result of that. He had great write ups still, just not on GAF.

He’s gone? Damn..
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
But we should be way, way past that point by now. Benchmarking the hardware, that was 2020 work.

The blurb on Epic's site literally says this came about from Coalition evaluating UE5 and it's perf:


Catch the public debut of Alpha Point, a UE5 technical demo created by The Coalition to evaluate UE5 on the Xbox Series X/S. Hear what the team learned as they tested internal Nanite assets in Lumen-driven lighting scenarios, as well as their thoughts on how UE5’s performance and memory stacks up in Xbox Series X and S-style production environments.
 

onesvenus

Member
He was defending a paid shill getting banned. And crying how it’s not fair that he doesn’t get a safe space himself. He accordingly got stripped of his title and branded a professional victim.

Time to break out the champagne.
The forum has lost a good deal of technical knowledge with VFX leaving. But that means other posters can keep repeating their technical bullshit without no one complaining.
 

Shmunter

Member
The forum has lost a good deal of technical knowledge with VFX leaving. But that means other posters can keep repeating their technical bullshit without no one complaining.
This particular user had substandard knowledge yet claimed to know it all. Not everyone is a 12yo that is easily bamboozled by a self proclaimed expert. Indeed no one would give a shit if not for the unbridled narcissism.
 

bitbydeath

Member
The forum has lost a good deal of technical knowledge with VFX leaving. But that means other posters can keep repeating their technical bullshit without no one complaining.
You mean the guy who thought PC last gen was the best graphics we’d see on consoles this gen? The guy who claimed Horizon Zero Dawn on PC would look better than Horizon 2 on PS5?

He had no clue when it came to gaming.
 
This particular user had substandard knowledge yet claimed to know it all. Not everyone is a 12yo that is easily bamboozled by a self proclaimed expert. Indeed no one would give a shit if not for the unbridled narcissism.
Lol you must still be little big mad since he schooled you in literally every single thread you ever approached him. Your posts seem to have a bunch of anguish and triggered in them. Bless your sensitive feelings. But he's gonna now, so no need for you to be publicly embarrassed over and over anymore. Cheers.
 
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