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[ethomaz]

People thinking unique "feel" or look is due to having a cutom engine are silly, there is nothing stopping an unreal game from looking and feeling like any game you've ever played without even needing some big rewrite.
infact you are more able to create a unique look when you don't need to start an engine from scratch and can actually focus on giving your game a unique look.

So why most if not all UE games have the same toy look.
You can say a game if using UE or not just by the look of it.
Generic Engines like Unreal Engine are limited to what you can do, for example you need to use Nanite or Lumen with the predefined settings the engine allow you... unless you heavy modify the Unreal Engine (some devs do) but at that point maybe you need to ask if it is worth to do that or build your own engine that fits better your needs.

But I agree with you... you can do a lot of things with Unreal Engine without need to rewrite anything.
Just when you want some specific things that are easier in a Engine tailored to your needs than made it happen in a generic Engine like Unreal Engine.

 

[Games of Today]

Biomutant will still have the best fur tech.

I just with they would make it 4K, 60fps on PS5.

 

[hussar16]

Didn't they say the same about UE3 and 4? I think in house engines will be fine.

except even big house companies are switching now. like cd red . i wouldnt be suprised if elder scrolls 6 or the next fallout will be on the unreal engine 5 . they are looking for massive scope

 

[CamHostage]

Nokia was defeated when Apple entered the Phone market .. it happens.

Yes, it happens that new technology eats the floor away of an existing business, but the companies don't throw in the towel the instance it happens. They release their competitive product (which in the case of Enlighten would have been in the works since before Lumen's introduction,) they shift their business plan, they look for ways to integrate their products into the new ecosystem.

I'm not sure where Enlighten would exist in a world where a "free" product works as well as it does, but it's an oft-used product (particularly in Japanese game productions.) It's possible that it'll remain in UE4 (and Unity) and that'll be that, or it's possible Enlighten might have other uses. (Lumen produces very attractive results but it's not yet bulletproof, and particularly in non-realistic game scenarios like cartoon graphics, I don't know that there's been a lot of development yet on that front? Nanite isn't great for simple shapes, but that's a different scenario.) Enlighten also isn't exactly a rapidly-iterated product (their last major update took 4 years and released in 2021,) so it's not like they're due for a jump. But either way, competition will still be out there looking for ways to work with or to supersede Epic's baseline Unreal Engine offerings. (There are other lighting plugins and tools out there too. Blender also has its EEVEE tool kit, though I'm not clear if that's for end product in-game usage.)

 

[justiceiro]

Inhouse engines will keep making sense if you aren't making another derivative game in a studio where the only news are shiny graphics.

 

[CamHostage]

People thinking unique "feel" or look is due to having a cutom engine are silly, there is nothing stopping an unreal game from looking and feeling like any game you've ever played without even needing some big rewrite.

Unreal Engine is also a lot more than just an "engine". If you'd ask developers, probably more would say they are moving to it for the development suite and tested stability and mature, logical UI layout and the strong adoption rate/ familiarity in the industry of the talent pool than purely the graphical horsepower. A great studio could get into that competitive arena on their own, but they've got the option of using tools every potential employee knows well (or could learn easily) and that the entire office could collaborate on easily to achieve results that are demonstrably possible if the product effort is put into it, that's just a hard thing to come up with a good alternative answer to.

And the great studios end up tearing out a lot of the "engine" anyways, building their own plugins and tools to supplant the included UE features (or at least they historically have with UE4; it remains to be seen how they'll approach UE5, but The Coalition has already demonstrated with its Alpha Point project that only pieces of UE5 and the Unreal Engine technology would be right for their production, and that was just a little demo.) So even the studios who use Unreal Engine fork the thing out a lot to be its internal engine anyway. (And that's true of other engines too. Insomniac is on its own engine, but even they used the ArtEngine tool of Unity for I think remastering Spider-Man.)

It does make me nervous, that we may be nearing an end of bespoke engines and that one or two providers will come to "own" the game development market, but either way, this is far, far from the end of experimental game design...

So why most if not all UE games have the same toy look.
You can say a game if using UE or not just by the look of it.

Somebody else could go through the tremendous number of UE titles which do not have a "Unreal Engine" look to them, but it should be obvious that not all UE games have the same look. UE3 had that problem, but even then, many games used the previous Unreal Engine (a great example being Guilty Gear Xrd) which looked unlike anything else made in that engine.



Templates and defaults lead to similarities between games, true. But you're probably going to get similar "same look" problems from Unreal and Unity projects. They're all utilizing similar techniques for say lighting (based on commonly adopted papers for how to do RT or voxel-cone tracing or whatever other technical term would get thrown into the mix of a Features bulletpoint list...), it's up to the developer to remix the math.

I mean, does everything made in PhotoShop look the same? Probably no, you'd say. But also, do a lot of images have telltale signs of being PhotoShopped?

Generic Engines like Unreal Engine are limited to what you can do, for example you need to use Nanite or Lumen with the predefined settings the engine allow you... unless you heavy modify the Unreal Engine (some devs do)...

That's incorrect. Nanite and Lumen are not required for UE5 projects, and in fact there are many cases (including past-gen platform or mobile-equivalent hardware support) where you would not use those technologies. For Nanite, it's just a toggle switch on any individual asset (and you'd just globally disable Nanite from the start if you were not planning a Nanite-structured product) and that swaps back in previous methods; for Lumen, it's a little more complicated in how it's used, but again, a developer would fall back to alternative methods.

 

[ResetEraVetVIP]

Naughty Dog enters the room

Exactly.

 

[ethomaz]

That's incorrect. Nanite and Lumen are not required for UE5 projects, and in fact there are many cases (including past-gen platform or mobile-equivalent hardware support) where you would not use those technologies. For Nanite, it's just a toggle switch on any individual asset (and you'd just globally disable Nanite from the start if you were not planning a Nanite-structured product) and that swaps back in previous methods; for Lumen, it's a little more complicated in how it's used, but again, a developer would fall back to alternative methods.

You say my quote is incorrect lol
And say nothing related to what I said.

Nanite and Lumen are examples like all features in UE... they are predefined... you have settings and stuffs to changes allowed by the engine.
If you need anything outside these settings you need to go custom.

Sometimes it is easy to custom because what you want fits how the Unreal Engine do the things... others times not... what you want to do doesn't fit with how the engine render or do the things internally... it is compatible.

In these case you need to go heavy custom... so if you have to go heavy custom it is better to do your won specif engine. Big companies choose inhouse engines because it is cheaper and easy to build them to give birth to their dreams than try to modify Unreal Engine to have similar results.

But but but CDPR... well anybody thinking that CDPR change of engine is more about a political scapegoat than really technical is fooling themselves... after Cyberpunk fiasco CDPR choose to blame their engine and was forced by the board to start to use a new one and why not UE.
Imagine if even with UE5 they end having a worst game technically than Cyberpunk lol

 

[CamHostage]

You say my quote is incorrect lol
And say nothing related to what I said.

Nanite and Lumen are examples like all features in UE... they are predefined... you have settings and stuffs to changes allowed by the engine.
If you need anything outside these settings you need to go custom.

I'm sorry, maybe we're talking about two different things here?
Nanite is not something you need to go "custom" for if a developer were to use UE5. It's a feature you can turn on and off, globally and even per-asset. Disable it, and Unreal falls back to treating the object as a traditional mesh.
I haven't seen as much breakdown of the Lumen workflow but the overall GI and even individual light sources can switch between Lumen and other lighting treatments.

Nanite Virtualized Geometry in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.0 Documentation

Lumen Technical Details in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.0 Documentation

If Lumen and Nanite were the only way to make UE5 games, that would eliminate compatibility with platforms which cannot use those technologies. UE5 is made to work on most platforms (pretty much all) that UE4 supported, including mobile, Switch, and past-gen PS4/Xbox One systems. You won't get the powerful new features of UE5 on older/out-gen hardware, but you can still use all the essential services and improvements of the Unreal Engine 5 development suite.

Fortnite is now running on UE5, and that game is on every platform that it ran on with UE4 before Epic underwent the conversion.

 

[ethomaz]

I'm sorry, maybe we're talking about two different things here?
Nanite is not something you need to go "custom" for, it's a feature you can turn on and off, globally and even per-asset. Disable it, and Unreal falls back to treating the object as a traditional mesh. I haven't seen as much breakdown of the Lumen workflow but the overall GI and even individual light sources can switch between Lumen and other lighting treatments.

Nanite Virtualized Geometry in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.0 Documentation

Lumen Technical Details in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.0 Documentation

You can turn on and off yes.
You can change parameters yes.

Outside that you can't chance how Nanite do the work without going custom.
Same for Lunem or any other UE feature.

There is a reason why devs chooses to build their own engines.
That didn't change with UE5.

 

[Lethal01]

So why most if not all UE games have the same toy look.

Because the developers choose to go for that look since it's easy and in line with out current hardware capabilities. The only thing I can see you mean by "toy" look is that they are using realistic lighting with simplified designs.
There are tons of devs that choose to do something else and they have just as easy of a time doing so as they would from a custom engine

You can say a game if using UE or not just by the look of it.

Generic Engines like Unreal Engine are limited to what you can do,

They are limited only to what you want to do, It's easier to get a unique look out of Unreal than it is to make a whole new engine then go for a unique look, it's a matter of artistic skill and choice.

for example you need to use Nanite or Lumen with the predefined settings the engine allow you...

No, you can pretty easily change the settings to something totally different than the defaults.
You can also totally replace the lighting and shader system. replacing it is easier that writing a new engine around it.

unless you heavy modify the Unreal Engine (some devs do) but at that point maybe you need to ask if it is worth to do that or build your own engine that fits better your needs.

It wouldn't be, It would be far more work to build a new engine to include some tools that slightly help in creating the artstyle you want to make than to just program those tools into unreal.

But I agree with you... you can do a lot of things with Unreal Engine without need to rewrite anything.
Just when you want some specific things that are easier in a Engine tailored to your needs than made it happen in a generic Engine like Unreal Engine.

I don't think this statement makes sense.

 

[fran.fernandez]

We are moving to nanite now. Not much lumen as is very expensive but the graphic team is deciding best workflow.

Workflow change a lot and also profiling, techniques like baking assets or gpu instancing are not that useful anymore, scattering things is just different.

For me who work at game industry and did talk about shaders and gpu in japan (when I was unity) the big deal is learning one more render pipeline , now some stuff is forward , other deferred and now we have nanite pass , won’t be that fast to move from one engine to another (unity /unreal) . I don’t think it will change in house engine at all.

 

[CamHostage]

You can turn on and off yes.
You can change parameters yes.

Outside that you can't chance how Nanite do the work without going custom.
Same for Lunem or any other UE feature.

There is a reason why devs chooses to build their own engines.
That didn't change with UE5.

OK, so backing up, your post was confusing and I read it wrong; you were saying "you need to use Nanite or Lumen with the predefined settings the engine allow you... ", not that cannot not use Nanite or Lumen.

But I think you're arguing to argue? Even the "predefined settings" of Nanite and Lumen are still chasm of variety that you can dial in with just those two tools. You can make everything from photo-realistic projects to cartoon and surreal visual design within what's provided. You're the first person I've ever heard who looks at Nanite and Lumen (which are only two parts of UE5, and two parts which need not be used,) and goes, "Geez, what a little corner that paints us into..."

And that's if you use those tools; I see no reason why UE5 will not eventually build up the same quantity of plugins and middleware components (and even forked versions) that exist for Unreal Engine 4. I guess that's what you are calling "going custom", but switching from the included middleware provider's tool to a different middleware solution is not IMO that drastic a customization. (I assume Epic will have its own answers, but we're going to have to cross some of these bridges when somebody eventually gets a handle on hardware-based Mesh Shaders / Primitive Shaders, correct?)

As far as fully "going custom" and rewriting how Nanite or Lumen works, this is brand new technology so right now there's no known reason why you would totally rewrite it, but what of UE5 would be stopping you? Unreal Engine is not open-source, but it is customizable and modules can be replaced, all of its repositories are made available through Epic's Github. I would imagine if you got that bug up your butt to do so, you could conceivably write your own version if you weren't satisfied or couldn't wait for Epic's future releases to maybe solve your problems, no?

A developer can wildly customize their project, even within Unreal Engine. They can use parts of it and throw out other parts. I imagine they could even ignore the "game engine" and just use Unreal's tools for collaboration and sound management and physics and VFX to make a game using what they would consider "our own engine" (though at that point, you'd be tied into the Unreal monetization system anyway so the gains/variants would really have to be worth it.)

The option to build your own engine is still always there, and always will be. And hopefully, there will continue to be good reasons why some developers do it. But the daunting task of building your own engine, your own development suite, your own support documentation, your own set of plug-ins (or integration of external plugins,) all of that takes an army of talent and a lot of work, and unless you can't get what you need out of Unreal or Unity (or Godot or O3DE or UPBGE...), you're going to have a hard time justifying that to the moneymen as part of your project scope.

 

[ethomaz]

OK, so backing up, your post was confusing and I read it wrong; you were saying "you need to use Nanite or Lumen with the predefined settings the engine allow you... ", not that cannot not use Nanite or Lumen.

But I think you're arguing to argue? Even the "predefined settings" of Nanite and Lumen are still chasm of variety that you can dial in with just those two tools. You can make everything from photo-realistic projects to cartoon and surreal visual design within what's provided.

And that's if you use those tools; I see no reason why UE5 will not eventually build up the same quantity of plugins and middleware components (and even forked versions) that exist for Unreal Engine 4. I guess that's what you are calling "going custom", but switching from the included middleware provider's tool to a different middleware solution is not IMO that drastic a customization. (I assume Epic will have its own answers, but we're going to have to cross some of these bridges when somebody eventually gets a handle on hardware-based Mesh Shaders / Primitive Shaders, correct?)

As far as fully "going custom" and rewriting how Nanite or Lumen works, this is brand new technology so right now there's no known reason why you would totally rewrite it, but what of UE5 would be stopping you? Unreal Engine is not open-source, but it is customizable and modules can be replaced, all of its repositories are made available through Epic's Github. I would imagine if you got that bug up your butt to do so, you could conceivably write your own version if you weren't satisfied or couldn't wait for Epic's future releases to maybe solve your problems, no?

A developer can wildly customize their project, even within Unreal Engine. They can use parts of it and throw out other parts. I imagine they could even ignore the "game engine" and just use Unreal's tools for collaboration and sound management and physics and VFX to make a game using what they would consider "our own engine" (though at that point, you'd be tied into the Unreal monetization system anyway so the gains/variants would really have to be worth it.)

The option to build your own engine is still always there, and always will be. And hopefully, there will continue to be good reasons why some developers do it. But the daunting task of building your own engine, your own development suite, your own support documentation, your own set of plug-ins (or integration of external plugins,) all of that takes an army of talent and a lot of work, and unless you can't get what you need out of Unreal or Unity (or Godot or O3DE or UPBGE...), you're going to have a hard time justifying that to the moneymen as part of your project scope.

Forget Nanite or Lumen.

All UE feature are predefined with a set of possibilities and limitations... you can change what the Engine allow you to change unless you go heavy custom that I will call "against the engine".
Something are easier and others not.

When it is not you are being going with your own engine that try to heavy change the Unreal Engine base.

If you read developers interviews in sites like Gamesutra (I think they changed the name) they say when they want something and hit a wall in Unreal Engine they have three choices... A) change what they want to do or even remove that; B) Heavy customize the Unreal Engine to allow them make what they want; 3) Create an inhouse Engine.

Most devs that have the budget chooses the third option.
Devs that choose Unreal Engine are limited to what the Engine can do.... so they work with what the engine offer and are fine with that.

Continuing in the customize the Unreal Engine talk... it is not always easy... sometimes it is too hard to change something because it is the core for a lot of things in the Engine and so you start to break everything... trying to change the base nature of an engine will always be risk... in these cases go with some others Engine or just create your own engine.

 

[DaGwaphics]

That's too bad. Epic can't help if the hardware isn't good enough for what they want to render. Nvidia/AMD will just have to make more powerful cards.

That's certainly one way to look at it. The other is that there is a real base of users on PC and Console and if UE5 games develop the reputation of being notoriously poor performers (in comparison to visually comparable peers), expect that to have a direct impact on software sales and gamer opinions of the tech.

Chances are this is all worked out by the time we get actual games using the engine, but as it stands now the performance is a little rough (both on console and PC) but you can't complain about the visuals when nothing is moving. The horrendous state of the noise/artifacting that occurs around anything thing that moves if any level of TSR is used would be an entirely different thread.

I'll reserve final judgement for how the finished games turn out, seems premature to crown the engine the king of kings just yet.

 

[01011001]

That's certainly one way to look at it. The other is that there is a real base of users on PC and Console and if UE5 games develop the reputation of being notoriously poor performers (in comparison to visually comparable peers), expect that to have a direct impact on software sales and gamer opinions of the tech.

that is the real issue here. what we have seen so far from UE5 has a really bad Performance for how the demos look like.
the Matrix demo simply doesn't look good... at all... it looks good if you do those "cinematic" screenshots or slow camera pans.
but control the camera like a normal person would in any game and you have a blur and shimmer fest like nothing you've ever seen. seems to be post processing that takes way too long to smooth out correctly, resulting in checkerboard like artifacting during every single movement on screen... if I had to guess what's going on

doesn't help that it comes with enabled TSR as the standard, but even with DLSS it looks like ass in motion, although with slightly fewer artifacts behind moving objects (the checkerboard like patterns remain tho)

 

[Amiga]

It's not a matter of if it can be done but a matter of why it would be done. Why spend millions paying highly skilled engine developers for years to do what Unreal does across devices when you can pay for a UE5 license.
Some big studios would pay and develop their own but it is becoming more rare because of where the market has headed.

1- Risk of full dependence on a 3rd party. Can't guarantee licensing terms won't change in the future if Epic gain more leverage.
2- UE5 is great visually. but not as versatile when it comes to hitbox, physics and motion. some developers would want full control of this aspect. Especially for games like Forza.
3- If a studio has the management skill and experience. it would actually be cheaper to use an in-house engine. Like Insomniac and Sucker Punch. High sales for games like Spider-Man and Horizon are more than enough to cover development budget.

 

[lukilladog]

Really? You're gonna add mesh shaders with a mod?

I'd like to see that. Seems interesting. Why even have UE5 if Rockstar's engine can do it right now?

I could add high quality meshes with lods, just like I do with the cars that look far superior to what they are showing here.

 

[CamHostage]

If you read developers interviews in sites like Gamesutra (I think they changed the name) they say when they want something and hit a wall in Unreal Engine they have three choices... A) change what they want to do or even remove that; B) Heavy customize the Unreal Engine to allow them make what they want; 3) Create an inhouse Engine.

Most devs that have the budget chooses the third option.
Devs that choose Unreal Engine are limited to what the Engine can do.... so they work with what the engine offer and are fine with that.

Continuing in the customize the Unreal Engine talk... it is not always easy... sometimes it is too hard to change something because it is the core for a lot of things in the Engine and so you start to break everything... trying to change the base nature of an engine will always be risk... in these cases go with some others Engine or just create your own engine.

OK, I'm back on board with you here. Customization outside of what the engine was made to do (and/or has available external services to help you do) is difficult, and may be more work than it's worth to remain in the UE ecosystem. It's a flexible engine, with a lot of development features designed for any type of game, but at its heart, it's an engine made for a sci-fi FPS and a colorful hero TPS, and you will trip over those roots eventually if you dig down deep enough.

Counterpoint, however: nobody seems to go back to custom engines after working in UE. I can't think of any major examples of a big studio going into Unreal and later coming back out of it to make their own engine again. (And in the few cases where a developer has switched, it was a lateral move into another established development system. Bioware moved over to Frostbite for Mass Effect Andromeda and Anthem, assumedly at EA's insistence, and they're rumored to be going back to UE in part because those were both catastrophes; Denis Dyack famously had his fight with Epic and won't use Unreal after Too Human, but his new studio is using the Amazon Lumberyard spin-off O3DE.) There are stories of experienced game designers going indie and making their own game engine for their personal game after years of working at a big studio on Unreal or whatever, but those are passion projects or unusual creations, not big productions. Despite whatever hassles developers may experience in these big-name licensed engines versus drafting their own creations from scratch, it seems to ultimately be more worth it than not...

 

[Amiga]

..nobody seems to go back to custom engines after working in UE. I can't think of any major examples of a big studio going into Unreal and later coming back out of it to make their own engine again. (And in the few cases where a developer has switched, it was a lateral move into another established development system. Bioware moved over to Frostbite for Mass Effect Andromeda, and they're rumored to be going back to UE after that catastrophe..

Developers like Bioware(add CDPR/Bethesda/Obsidian) are content centric. They don't have expert programmers at leadership levels. unlike McCormack led Id, Tim at Epic, Gabe at Valve.. So for Bioware outsourcing would be best.
The opposite in the case of Guerrilla Games, they are a team led by programmers, they don't need U5. And It was easier and cheaper to add writers and Quest designers for Horizon ZD.

 

[GenericUser]

I'm a geometry junkie in games. I can't get enough polys and therefore, I can't wait to see the first games that use nanite. I agree that - at the moment - there is no engine able to compete with UE5. But we haven't even gotten ONE full game using UE5 and you can bet your ass that other programmers are already trying to figure out how to copy features like nanite and lumen. As time progresses and tech becomes more and more powerful, it will also be easier to copy UE5. I also think that UE5 aims to fulfill the needs of full blown AAA devs, smaller devs or genres that are less dependend on delivering the latest eye candy will live well without UE5. So at the moment, I don't see the risk of a monopoly. Not at all.

 

[DukeNukem00]

People thinking unique "feel" or look is due to having a cutom engine are silly, there is nothing stopping an unreal game from looking and feeling like any game you've ever played without even needing some big rewrite.
infact you are more able to create a unique look when you don't need to start an engine from scratch and can actually focus on giving your game a unique look.

It's not silly in the slightest and it's 100% true. I even had a similar discussion at the end of UE3's life and i took almost 10 screenshots of walls, each from a different ue3 game, batman, alpha protocol, etc. just to show the person i was talking to that they all look exactly the same. Which they did.

Yeah, in a different world from ours which does not actually exist, every dev out there will customize every single part of the engine every time so its 100% theirs - but that never happened and never will. Which leads to games having a very specific look and feel. And you posting an anime looking fighting game does not change that. Obviously people are refering to normal games, not cell shaded or artistic ones like Dishonored or Guilty Gear.

The engine also is not only about visuals, its the movement of the character, the feel when you play. Look at idtech 5 in Rage or Wolf The New Order - such a specific feel to everything. Such a unique and instantly recognisable visual makeup. Look at the Stalker games - completely unlike anything out there in all areas (feel, movement, look, texturing, effects,etc). Look at the original Half Life and its GoldSrc engine - you know its that engine from the first second. With its specific quake legacy mechanics.

No matter how much some people want to insist UE doesnt feel in particular way, its factually not true. And we have decades of gaming as proof for this

 

[yurinka]

Nah, I think some AAA game engines will reach similar or better results, as happened with previous UE versions.

Sony, Rockstar, Quantic Dream, Unity and pretty likely other ones like EA, Ubisoft and so on pretty likely will achieve these things. They simply are busy and didn't have time to show or complete their first brand new next gen engine, and until now have been using previous gen engines with a few minor extra tricks on top for crossgen and early next gen only games.

Naughty Dog enters the room

Naughty Dog enters the room

Knack enters the room

 

[kikkis]

Maybe ea ditches frostbite?

 

[Lethal01]

It's not silly in the slightest and it's 100% true. I even had a similar discussion at the end of UE3's life and i took almost 10 screenshots of walls, each from a different ue3 game, batman, alpha protocol, etc. just to show the person i was talking to that they all look exactly the same. Which they did.

Yeah, in a different world from ours which does not actually exist, every dev out there will customize every single part of the engine every time so its 100% theirs - but that never happened and never will. Which leads to games having a very specific look and feel. And you posting an anime looking fighting game does not change that. Obviously people are refering to normal games, not cell shaded or artistic ones like Dishonored or Guilty Gear.

The engine also is not only about visuals, its the movement of the character, the feel when you play. Look at idtech 5 in Rage or Wolf The New Order - such a specific feel to everything. Such a unique and instantly recognisable visual makeup. Look at the Stalker games - completely unlike anything out there in all areas (feel, movement, look, texturing, effects,etc). Look at the original Half Life and its GoldSrc engine - you know its that engine from the first second. With its specific quake legacy mechanics.

No matter how much some people want to insist UE doesnt feel in particular way, its factually not true. And we have decades of gaming as proof for this

Some games having a similar aesthetic just doesn't prove that it's something to do with the engine at all.

Guilty Gear strive is a normal game, they didn't need to have some huge engine rewrite to achieve their look, all they needed were custom shaders and their own custom models.
They work well within the framework of the engine, the unique feel that games have is due to unique aesthetics, custom shaders, custom 3d models with unique styles as well as tons of other custom assets, custom particle systems, custom post-processing animation, etc etc etc all of these are things that are very specifically made to be easily changeable in any major engine or have little to do with the engine and everything to do with asset creation.

A far bigger reason you may see games looking similar is extreme asset reuse/tons of devs going for realism these things will make games look similar regardless of engine. If you think Doom looking unique is account of the way they cull geometry or something, you are silly.

 

[DukeNukem00]

Some games having a similar aesthetic just doesn't prove that it's something to do with the engine at all.

Guilty Gear strive is a normal game, they didn't need to have some huge engine rewrite to achieve their look, all they needed were custom shaders and their own custom models.
They work well within the framework of the engine, the unique feel that games have is due to unique aesthetics, custom shaders, custom 3d models with unique styles as well as tons of other custom assets, custom effects, custom post processing, all of these are things that are very specifically made to be easily changeable in any major engine or have little to do with the engine and everything to do with asset creation.

A far bigger reason you may see games looking similar is extreme asset reuse/tons of devs going for realism these things will make games look similar regardless of engine.

All the pics you posted, outside of Guilty Gear, everyone who knows the specific look can tell they're unreal engine games. Its not the general estethic, is the way they render the textures, the specific "shine".

I already gave multiple examples, from the 90s, 00s and 10s of different engines that you can recognize in 3 seconds. Same as you can recognize Frostbyte, even if you look at Inquisition, or Battlefield 4 or Battlefront 2 - you just cant escape the specific way in which it renders textures and enviroments.

I seriously have no ideea why there's pushback against this thing thats a hard fact since 3d engines exist, its not a new thing. There's no reason for people to want one engine in their games instead of a variety of engines that focus on different strengths

 

[Lethal01]

All the pics you posted, outside of Guilty Gear, everyone who knows the specific look can tell they're unreal engine games. Its not the general estethic, is the way they render the textures, the specific "shine".

I already gave multiple examples, from the 90s, 00s and 10s of different engines that you can recognize in 3 seconds. Same as you can recognize Frostbyte, even if you look at Inquisition, or Battlefield 4 or Battlefront 2 - you just cant escape the specific way in which it renders textures and enviroments.

I seriously have no ideea why there's pushback against this thing thats a hard fact since 3d engines exist, its not a new thing. There's no reason for people to want one engine in their games instead of a variety of engines that focus on different strengths

Why don't you try actually definite this "shine" or actually say what about how it renders textures inherent to the unreal engine. The way they handle specular? that can be totally changed in moments.

If you can't then you are just making baseless claims and using confirmation bias while saying "it's so obvious why can't you see it, without any actual evidence.

Can you actually communicate what about the unreal games in the last post do that makes you think they look alike? Try actually making some points instead of saying "it's so obvious, why doesn't everyone see it"
I could easily say Doom looks like it could be an Unreal game and I doubt you'd have any real way to prove it doesn't.

 

[Three]

1- Risk of full dependence on a 3rd party. Can't guarantee licensing terms won't change in the future if Epic gain more leverage.
2- UE5 is great visually. but not as versatile when it comes to hitbox, physics and motion. some developers would want full control of this aspect. Especially for games like Forza.
3- If a studio has the management skill and experience. it would actually be cheaper to use an in-house engine. Like Insomniac and Sucker Punch. High sales for games like Spider-Man and Horizon are more than enough to cover development budget.

These are some of the benefits but Insomniac and Sucker Punch are both well funded big studios as well as experienced. I'm not sure that it's cheaper for them compared to smaller studios creating a game which might not sell as much as Spiderman and Ghost of Tsushima (Horizon is built by Guerrilla Games on the Decima engine).

 

[VFXVeteran]

that is the real issue here. what we have seen so far from UE5 has a really bad Performance for how the demos look like.
the Matrix demo simply doesn't look good... at all... it looks good if you do those "cinematic" screenshots or slow camera pans.
but control the camera like a normal person would in any game and you have a blur and shimmer fest like nothing you've ever seen. seems to be post processing that takes way too long to smooth out correctly, resulting in checkerboard like artifacting during every single movement on screen... if I had to guess what's going on

doesn't help that it comes with enabled TSR as the standard, but even with DLSS it looks like ass in motion, although with slightly fewer artifacts behind moving objects (the checkerboard like patterns remain tho)

I haven't messed around with the Matrix demo but are you sure you aren't seeing RT samples not being fully resolved yet? We see this in every game using RT GI and AO. Simply put, RT is still too slow on even the highest of GPUs.

 

[VFXVeteran]

1- Risk of full dependence on a 3rd party. Can't guarantee licensing terms won't change in the future if Epic gain more leverage.

Agree 100%

2- UE5 is great visually. but not as versatile when it comes to hitbox, physics and motion. some developers would want full control of this aspect.

Which can be modified at the studio's leisure within UE5. It's completely open source and we take branches from UE and can do what we will. Granted it will take some overhead in order to keep all UE data structures, etc.. but I don't see this as an issue for a company that has good graphics developers that can dig deeper into the engine.

Especially for games like Forza.
3- If a studio has the management skill and experience. it would actually be cheaper to use an in-house engine. Like Insomniac and Sucker Punch. High sales for games like Spider-Man and Horizon are more than enough to cover development budget.

Disagree. Those companies would have never made a Nanite-like algorithm because they would be totally focused on making that next game as quickly as possible. They don't have the overhead to spend years doing R&D and studying film studio advancements to try incorporating it into their engine. As an example, the studio I used to work with used Alembic cache as their means of animation and point cloud info for geometry assets. UE didn't have it implemented and we worked with them to incorporate it. Now the engine supports Alembic (a standard in the VFX community). Insomniac and SP would never go that route seeing as they only make their engine custom to their games and therefore would always be "behind' the curve as far as advanced features.

 

[DukeNukem00]

Can you actually communicate what about the unreal games in the last post do that makes you think they look alike? Try actually making some points instead of saying "it's so obvious, why doesn't everyone see it"
I could easily say Doom looks like it could be an Unreal game and I doubt you'd have any real way to prove it doesn't.

Im not asking why everyone doesn see it, because everyone does in fact see it. It's just a few people who for some reason have chosen this topic to be a fight. I already said the engine's texturing and general aspect makes it easily recongnisable. I could tell a game was using UE 3 from the first promotional screenshots. This isnt really controversial. Its always been the case. Blows my mind how you chose this subject to argue against

You could say that Doom looks like an unreal engine except for the fact that it doesnt look anything like an unreal engine game. Its specific idtech look is something i already said in my previous post.

 

[UnNamed]

So why most if not all UE games have the same toy look.
You can say a game if using UE or not just by the look of it.

Not true.

But it was true with the UE3.

 

[sncvsrtoip]

Listening to new df direct saying how heavy is eu5 on cpu and that it scale badly with number of cores in 2022 (+ how noisy matrix demo looks on xsx/ps5 on big tv) Im starting to think this engine is overhyped.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

All the pics you posted, outside of Guilty Gear, everyone who knows the specific look can tell they're unreal engine games. Its not the general estethic, is the way they render the textures, the specific "shine".

I already gave multiple examples, from the 90s, 00s and 10s of different engines that you can recognize in 3 seconds. Same as you can recognize Frostbyte, even if you look at Inquisition, or Battlefield 4 or Battlefront 2 - you just cant escape the specific way in which it renders textures and enviroments.

I seriously have no ideea why there's pushback against this thing thats a hard fact since 3d engines exist, its not a new thing. There's no reason for people to want one engine in their games instead of a variety of engines that focus on different strengths

There is actually. Most studios simply do not have the money or technical skill to make their own engine.


I want more than a handful of triple AAA games coming out each year. And if Unreal engine helps to keep pumping out games faster by smaller studios I'm all for it. Development cycles of 5 years are unsustainable.

 

[Hugare]

Imagine a developer at CDPR trying to get some work at another company after spending 10+ years with RED Engine

This reason alone is a good argument for getting Unreal Engine adopted by as many studios as possible

I imagine that they had to train every new employee to the RED Engine, costing them a lot of time, efficiency, + limiting what they could achieve in terms of creativity

Now any developer they hire with UE experience can join their team and get started almost immediately

 

[Craig of War]

RDR2 running on Rockstar in house engine shit on any Unreal Engine game

 

[DaGwaphics]

I haven't messed around with the Matrix demo but are you sure you aren't seeing RT samples not being fully resolved yet? We see this in every game using RT GI and AO. Simply put, RT is still too slow on even the highest of GPUs.

The issues with motion in the UE5 city sample/awakens console demo are considerably worse than anything that occurs in released games so far.

 

[Dust-by-Monday]

I could add high quality meshes with lods, just like I do with the cars that look far superior to what they are showing here.

Yeah, that's not what Nanite is doing though.

 

[01011001]

I haven't messed around with the Matrix demo but are you sure you aren't seeing RT samples not being fully resolved yet? We see this in every game using RT GI and AO. Simply put, RT is still too slow on even the highest of GPUs.

to me it looks more like post processing being low quality.
you don't see the slow fade in you'd expect if it was ray tracing related. it's more like an instant and constantly visible checkerboard pattern. and during fast camera pans the artifacts almost look like macroblocking found in a low bitrate video stream.

I really don't like how the demo looks at all. I get that what is on display is pretty impressive on a technical level with RT reflections everywhere and rt GI, but it just doesn't look right to me.

in the end it's only a demo of course

 

[Lethal01]

Im not asking why everyone doesn see it, because everyone does in fact see it. It's just a few people who for some reason have chosen this topic to be a fight. I already said the engine's texturing and general aspect makes it easily recongnisable. I could tell a game was using UE 3 from the first promotional screenshots. This isnt really controversial. Its always been the case. Blows my mind how you chose this subject to argue against

You could say that Doom looks like an unreal engine except for the fact that it doesnt look anything like an unreal engine game. Its specific idtech look is something i already said in my previous post.

Like I said, saying "it's texturing and general aspect make it easily recognizable" is a total non answer, what do you even mean by "its texturing" are you talking about the way they filter the texture? Do you mean the amount of pop in? Please realize that you aren't actually saying anything.
It's like saying "because of its graphics" WHAT ABOUT IT'S GRAPHICS? Is there a specfic falloff for their fresnel unique to Unreal? do you mean there is a problem with the handling of screen space reflection unique to Unreal?

You are claiming that the reason UE game's look similar is due to the engine but have not given a single example as to what the engine does which creates games that don't look unique.
You have given no real arguments that don't boil down to "I argued about this somewhere else and totally won" and "lots of people agree with me"
Neither of these things really mean anything.

Just about anything you could think to blame the engine is something that is literally designed to be changed. It would be like blaming the engine because everyone uses a specific cobblestone texture.

 

[DukeNukem00]

Like I said, saying "it's texturing" and general aspect make it easily recognizable" is a total non answer.
It's like saying "because of it's graphics" WHAT ABOUT IT'S GRAPHICS

You are claiming that the reason UE game's look similar is due to it's engine but have not given a single example as to what the engine does that makes games that don't look unique.
you have given no real arguments that don't boil down to "I argued about this somewhere else and totally won" and "lots of people agree with me"
Neither of these things really mean anything.

Your own pictures disprove your point yet you keep going around in circles for some reason. The reason unreal engine games look the same its because they use the unreal engine. How would you want them to look as ? You got your answer why ue games look the same, you just ignore it with made up reasons. No matter how hard you refuse to ignore reality, it wont change. UE games will continue to look the same

 

[Lethal01]

Your own pictures disprove your point yet you keep going around in circles for some reason. The reason unreal engine games look the same its because they use the unreal engine. How would you want them to look as ? You got your answer why ue games look the same, you just ignore it with made up reasons. No matter how hard you refuse to ignore reality, it wont change. UE games will continue to look the same

What do you even mean by "it's texturing" are you talking about the way they filter the texture? Do you mean the amount of pop in? Please realize that you aren't actually saying anything.
It's like saying "because of its graphics" WHAT ABOUT IT'S GRAPHICS? Is there a specific falloff for their fresnel unique to Unreal? do you mean there is a problem with the handling of screen space reflection unique to Unreal?

Just about anything you could think to blame the engine is something that is literally designed to be changed. It would be like blaming the engine because everyone uses a specific cobblestone texture.

I am not ignoring the answer, you are not giving one. you have said literally nothing about what these games do that is something inherent to the Unreal Engine. You are claiming the pictures look the same when they are as different as games in totally different engines which is probably why you haven't realized that several of them were in fact taken from games made in different engines but you claim it's obvious they were made in Unreal and "you just have to look at them". .

The games I posted all look totally different btw, We are going in circle because you have said absolutely nothing of value and given zero real points about Unreal Engine making games look similar.

 

[DaGwaphics]

to me it looks more like post processing being low quality.
you don't see the slow fade in you'd expect if it was ray tracing related. it's more like an instant and constantly visible checkerboard pattern. and during fast camera pans the artifacts almost look like macroblocking found in a low bitrate video stream.

I really don't like how the demo looks at all. I get that what is on display is pretty impressive on a technical level with RT reflections everywhere and rt GI, but it just doesn't look right to me.

in the end it's only a demo of course

I'm like of both minds on the demo, on the one hand what they've done with the lighting and the details of the environment are amazing to me and then on the other is whatever is happening with the motion. I'm hoping they can get that worked out by the time actual games get released, in which case I think the end result would be quite impressive. Overall, I still think the demo is the most next-level thing we've seen. Here's to hoping we can move the camera without all the negative effects in the final games.

 

[lukilladog]

Yeah, that's not what Nanite is doing though.

Different methods, similar pragmatic appearance. Remember when we were promised incredible reflections because... "raytracing". But in reality all has to be scaled down and nanite wont be different.

 

[3liteDragon]

lol

 

[K2D]

Seeing as how CPU constrained UE5 will be (DF) , I doubt we'll see actual game apps maintaining the level of graphics we're seeing in the matrix demo, this or even next generation.

 

[Amiga]

Disagree. Those companies would have never made a Nanite-like algorithm because they would be totally focused on making that next game as quickly as possible. They don't have the overhead to spend years doing R&D and studying film studio advancements to try incorporating it into their engine.

AFAIK Sony specifically have a technical division dedicated to software R&D and roll out new features to all their studios. I bet they had a big roll in helping GG go from a corridor FPS team into 3rd person open world. They also leverage their film studio division to support their game studios.
Other publishers not likely to abandon in house engines like Id Tech, Source, RE, Frostbite and would want to invest in them. but would let some of their less technically capable studios use UE5 for the interim.

 

[vpance]

AFAIK Sony specifically have a technical division dedicated to software R&D and roll out new features to all their studios. I bet they had a big roll in helping GG go from a corridor FPS team into 3rd person open world. They also leverage their film studio division to support their game studios.
Other publishers not likely to abandon in house engines like Id Tech, Source, RE, Frostbite and would want to invest in them. but would let some of their less technically capable studios use UE5 for the interim.

ICE team. When the first Valley demo came out Epic said they worked with Sony pretty early on during dev, so they definitely had a heads up on what UE5 was going to do.

Wouldn't be surprised if another Sony internal studio moves to UE5. It would certainly help for future PC ports down the line. Guys like Bend will continue with Unreal and move to 5.

 

[VFXVeteran]

The issues with motion in the UE5 city sample/awakens console demo are considerably worse than anything that occurs in released games so far.

I can't check it out unless it's been released for the PC as well.

 

[DaGwaphics]

I can't check it out unless it's been released for the PC as well.

It is on the PC (the city portion, nothing with the Matrix characters). Judging from the YT videos the same odd artifacts exist on PC that are visible on console, though on PC you can choose to run at native res and that is a bit better.