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The Coalition - Alpha Point Technical Demo and Character Rendering Test on Unreal Engine 5

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3liteDragon

Member
Character Rendering Test Stats:

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Character Creation:

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Character Performance at 30FPS on Series X:

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Gen 4 vs Gen 5:

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Conclusions:

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I think my takeaway - from what I’ve watched - is that the hair in unreal 5 and the actual animation of that face - at the fidelity it’s at - could potentially be mind blowing - like if the hair moves like this:

That’d be crazy
 

3liteDragon

Member
Yea, lets ignore a two month old Valley of the Ancients showcase which similarly renders billions of Quixel Megascan asset polygons on Series X.

flrkv3j.png



Alpha Point demo was not a marketing material. It was created for internal use and testing (watch the video)

And they brought it to GDC.

They did not need to crank up polys to billion territory. Epic did that already.
Lol it's not actually rendering a billion polygons on the console, that's the total triangle count of the entire demo. Don't think we know exactly how many polygons are being rendered in this specific screenshot.
 

Nickolaidas

Banned
I think my takeaway - from what I’ve watched - is that the hair in unreal 5 and the actual animation of that face - at the fidelity it’s at - could potentially be mind blowing - like if the hair moves like this:

That’d be crazy

The fact that we're approaching a gaming age where fur actually LOOKS like fur is enough for me.

Anyways, safe to say that UE5 will bring true next-gen with it?
 
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The fact that we're approaching a gaming age where fur actually LOOKS like fur is enough for me.

Anyways, safe to say that UE5 will bring true next-gen with it?
For real - if we can get games honestly that’s focus more on this type of stuff with similar fidelity to what we have - like liquid and fire and smoke and shit all behave properly, the fur moves like that - I could give a fuck about increasing literally anything else, animations and draw distance we’ve already got. Realistic characters and environments we’ve already got - I wanna see shit move properly at some point, have some destructability and dynamic lighting - like look at this hair:
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Imagine being such a fucking idiot that you could believe that two systems that are more close than they’ve ever been has one that can only do 100 million triangles when the other can do 16 billion. Like how are you that flipping dense. That guy is an absolute chode.

the worst thing is, how old is he? Grown assed people actively pushing this shit on social media.
 
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Riky

$MSFT
Imagine being such a fucking idiot that you could believe that two systems that are more close than they’ve ever been has one that can can only do 100 million triangles when the other can do 16 billion. Like how are you that flipping dense. That guy is an absolute chode.

the worst thing is, how old is he? Grown assed people actively pushing this shit on social media.

It's the same idiot who said Series consoles couldn't do Ray Tracing as it didn't say so on the box🤣
 

jonnyp

Member
Yes, MetaHuman and UE5 look great. Was hoping they'd show something more than these two small, static demos
 
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Fredrik

Member
Okay Gears 6 is going to look nuts.
But if 60fps is a target and 46fps is where they’re at, with no game elements included, then I think we’ll see the return of 30fps this gen once devs leave last gen behind.
 

Shmunter

Member
I mean Nanite is still very GPU hungry. it is bringing big GPUs like the 3090 to their knees in 4k with both the 6900xt and 3090 struggling to even hit 50 fps in the latest UE5 demo.

There is a reason why the UE5 target for both PS5 and XSX is only 1440p 30 fps on high Lumens settings and just 1080p 30 fps on Epic Lumen settings. All that FREE LOD stuff is just marketing PR. The GPU still has to render everything.
All correct, but I was referring to the memory management portion and the need for coalition to tile repeating textures still in Ue5.
 

onesvenus

Member
Can someone explain why they are still tiling textures for the floor to save memory?

The whole point of these mega scans is to be MEGA and seamless. Seems immediate asset streaming is not on the books for at least Coalition devs?
It's not textures they are tiling but geometry. And they do it because it makes all the sense in the world to optimize data, not because they are not using asset streaming but because, taking into account the limited amount of different geometry you want to store both in disk and memory, it doesn't make sense to replicate data at all. Do you think those statues shown on the first UE demo were all different models? Even with megascans we will see a lot of the same models instanced in various places.

That’s like saying water is wet. Physical reality of constraints will always exist of course.

UE5 is supposed to significantly alter the balance of the equation however where texture tiling should no longer be part of the consideration. Even Rage in the day did this but was too restrictive for universal adoption.

Not going to win any hearts and minds of Xbox fans with this, but I’m calling out that the pivotal factor of asset streaming as displayed by Epic in the unveiling is not upto snuff here.
Again, if you look at what they are saying, they talk about geometry tiling, not textures. And this doesn't mean anything regarding asset streaming, it just makes sense to use tiling on repeated geometry.
 

PaintTinJr

Member
It's not textures they are tiling but geometry. And they do it because it makes all the sense in the world to optimize data, not because they are not using asset streaming but because, taking into account the limited amount of different geometry you want to store both in disk and memory, it doesn't make sense to replicate data at all. Do you think those statues shown on the first UE demo were all different models? Even with megascans we will see a lot of the same models instanced in various places.


Again, if you look at what they are saying, they talk about geometry tiling, not textures. And this doesn't mean anything regarding asset streaming, it just makes sense to use tiling on repeated geometry.
I found this issue puzzling too - in the context of UE5 - because decals /masking is still effectively 2D, and the real gains of lumen's lighting, and nanite come from their inherent 3D-ness.

I got the impression from the video, that memory use was very much something they were trying to keep on top of, which might be because of the Series S, but it felt more like because kit-bashing was less performant with the state of UE5 on Series at present, also leading to need for decals - hence the 90% to 10% split of non-megascans to megascans split for their test demo- and possibly the target frame-rate (of trying for 60fps) leaving their storage solution with even less time to stream in data as needed.

AFAIK reusing the same megascanned asset and kit-bash instancing it(different orientation and scale) is what nanite excels at, for things like walls and flooring.
 

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
Okay Gears 6 is going to look nuts.
But if 60fps is a target and 46fps is where they’re at, with no game elements included, then I think we’ll see the return of 30fps this gen once devs leave last gen behind.

Lumen and Unreal Engine 5 arent even out yet.
Epic is super confident they can improve performance by the time the engine releases.

Heck TC was using Convolution Bloom in this demo something that was introduced effectively for offline rendering not realtime they are already pulling some madness with an early access build of an engine.
TCs production quality games /renders are gonna be no joke.

By the time Unreal Engine 5 actually comes out and any games especially from TC are at production quality 60fps will be easy work with TSR.
 

Shmunter

Member
It's not textures they are tiling but geometry. And they do it because it makes all the sense in the world to optimize data, not because they are not using asset streaming but because, taking into account the limited amount of different geometry you want to store both in disk and memory, it doesn't make sense to replicate data at all. Do you think those statues shown on the first UE demo were all different models? Even with megascans we will see a lot of the same models instanced in various places.


Again, if you look at what they are saying, they talk about geometry tiling, not textures. And this doesn't mean anything regarding asset streaming, it just makes sense to use tiling on repeated geometry.
Ok, I’ll check it it out again
 

onesvenus

Member
AFAIK reusing the same megascanned asset and kit-bash instancing it(different orientation and scale) is what nanite excels at, for things like walls and flooring.
Yup, I was talking about disk size and memory optimization. Taking into account that Nanite excels at instancing, it makes no sense to have repeating geometry on a mesh, what you'd do is split it to have a single mesh and repeat it.
The savings you can get from this can then be used to have more individual assets.
I don't think it's a rendering or streaming performance consideration at all.

About the use of decals, I'm sure we will see a lot of them. Instead of having a lot of very similar assets (walls for example), you will create a small amount of them in really high-res and use decals to hide the usage of the same assets. Using POM decals you can really fake both the 2D aspect and lighting of them convincingly.

All in all, it seems like they are being cautious about the cost Nanite has on memory consumption and disk size and about the cost Lumen currently has. They were very clear about the drawbacks of what they tried, I feel like they would have said it if those things were the result of memory problems in S for example. Looking at the data they reported it doesn't seem they were memory limited
 

PaintTinJr

Member
Yup, I was talking about disk size and memory optimization. Taking into account that Nanite excels at instancing, it makes no sense to have repeating geometry on a mesh, what you'd do is split it to have a single mesh and repeat it.
The savings you can get from this can then be used to have more individual assets.
I don't think it's a rendering or streaming performance consideration at all.

About the use of decals, I'm sure we will see a lot of them. Instead of having a lot of very similar assets (walls for example), you will create a small amount of them in really high-res and use decals to hide the usage of the same assets. Using POM decals you can really fake both the 2D aspect and lighting of them convincingly.

All in all, it seems like they are being cautious about the cost Nanite has on memory consumption and disk size and about the cost Lumen currently has. They were very clear about the drawbacks of what they tried, I feel like they would have said it if those things were the result of memory problems in S for example. Looking at the data they reported it doesn't seem they were memory limited
I get what you are saying - in regards of the S, because it isn't Lumen capable, so a fallback to UE4 lighting with old trick, with double memory pools seems like the obvious solution.

But surely for the X, they would just take 5-10 lower end megascanned bricks and kit bash that uniqueness, and then throw on compressed normal maps, at a group level, to author even more uniqueness - to remove any visible repetition, no?
 
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Yeah who is this guy?, I see his tweets being posted here and there and it's always to put PS5 in a positive light. He's obviously a paid shill, has no technical knowledge, embarrassing really.
And you're relevant, Xbox fan?

For what is worth, he basically right. This Coalition's demo looks way worse then Epic's demos in every single way. And just numbers of polygons proves it
 

Leyasu

Banned
For what is worth, he basically right. This Coalition's demo looks way worse then Epic's demos in every single way. And just numbers of polygons proves it
Just no.

TC are just showing some of their early tests. Whereas Epic are investing serious time into their demos because they are trying to sell licenses.

Surely you must understand that right?
 
And you're relevant, Xbox fan?

For what is worth, he basically right. This Coalition's demo looks way worse then Epic's demos in every single way. And just numbers of polygons proves it
Just don't buddy, agreeing with this tool just makes you look stupid. The two demo's were created for very different reasons, and the amount of time and resources put in to both are vastly different. They are simply not comparable in any way, and this guys tweets are not worth the time it takes to read them.
 

onesvenus

Member
I get what you are saying - in regards of the S, because it isn't Lumen capable, so a fallback to UE4 lighting with old trick, with double memory pools seems like the obvious solution.

But surely for the X, they would just take 5-10 lower end megascanned bricks and kit bash that uniqueness, and then throw on compressed normal maps, at a group level, to author even more uniqueness - to remove any visible repetition, no?
Taking into account that Nanite meshes do not support per-instance vertex paint I'm not sure they support per-instance UV so the only way to hide repetition would be with different assets or with decals
 

Saaleh

Banned
Good effort, anything UE5 is welcomed. Coalition Studio thank you for sharing. But people here seems confused,

1_ There is no such thing as diminishing return. Both [Art and tech] in video games can always improve. We will be impressed in this gen and in next gen..etc, it all depends on the studio if they want to make average games like sea of theifs or make next gen stuff. Just imagine [8k/60fps] [UE6], that will need a generational leap in [Arts/Animations/Physics/Tech/AssetQuality]. Just imagine sand beach in 8k zoomed in with next gen physics. hehe
2_ So far, in terms of UE5, what was DEMONSTRATED by both consoles has proven that the I/O architecture in PS5 is crucial to UE5 features. So PC and next iterations of Series X needs to keep up with the tech and all platforms needs to move on from old development style including the ps5 needs to move on from the ps4.
3_ Through optimisation, there is a chance that the Series X at some point in the future will reach the level of quality [in streaming assets] that the ps5 can do right now, but Ps5 will also exceed it too.

So we have a bright future in UE5. We really need this tech.
 
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martino

Member
people miss the point of some things tested here and it's production of assets and you want that or your artists just become megascan client picking things from there.
and it's not a surprise the finding are bootleneck will become the tools for them and producing them more than ever.
 
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Leyasu

Banned
Of course. But by comparison number he isn't wrong at all.

But i'm sure you remember what Xbox brigade said last year for UE5 on PS5, now when their very Xbox devs made a demo, surprise, it fluctuate from 1080 to 1440p. :/
The numbers are not comparable when the goals are not remotely the same. Or has the debate shifted to who has the worst fanboys?
 

Snake29

RSI Employee of the Year
I said nothing about the PS5 demo being anything other than incredible, the problem arose when fanboys claimed it could only be done on PS5. That was not true then or now. Still doesn't change the fact this Joe guy is a muppet.

So nobody said UE5 was exclusive for one system....

The demo was and so far we can't compare since that demo was only running on the PS5.
 

PaintTinJr

Member
Taking into account that Nanite meshes do not support per-instance vertex paint I'm not sure they support per-instance UV so the only way to hide repetition would be with different assets or with decals
I might be wrong, but AFAIK the workflow would be either use authoring tools that can handle cinema level assets like the 3 parts of the 33million triangle warrior from lumen in the land of nanite to UV like the shield perturbation IIRC.

Or kit bash with UE5 to make a megascan group - forget the exact name - then export that to authoring tools, UV in the tool, then re-import to UE5 as a single megascan asset. Or just export, re-import the parts that need repetition removed, rather than every brick in the group.
 

Zathalus

Member
Imagine being such a fucking idiot that you could believe that two systems that are more close than they’ve ever been has one that can only do 100 million triangles when the other can do 16 billion. Like how are you that flipping dense. That guy is an absolute chode.

the worst thing is, how old is he? Grown assed people actively pushing this shit on social media.
Lies, everyone knows the PS5 is 160 times as fast as the XSX.

While the PS5 renders in glorious 4k, the XSX has to do with 360p.
 

onesvenus

Member
I might be wrong, but AFAIK the workflow would be either use authoring tools that can handle cinema level assets like the 3 parts of the 33million triangle warrior from lumen in the land of nanite to UV like the shield perturbation IIRC.

Or kit bash with UE5 to make a megascan group - forget the exact name - then export that to authoring tools, UV in the tool, then re-import to UE5 as a single megascan asset. Or just export, re-import the parts that need repetition removed, rather than every brick in the group.
Oh sorry, I misunderstood. Authoring the same asset with multiple UV would surely increase disk size and memory consumption, though. It's a compromise between the uniqueness of it all and disk size and memory consumption.
I don't think anyone should be expecting all assets to be unique so looking for ways to hide the repetition makes sense, not only from a memory consumption and disk space points of view but also from a manpower POV.
 

azertydu91

Hard to Kill
Hi guys I'm doing chemo right now and can't watch the video, can you guys tell me what those videos show ?
I was intrigued about what they can do with UE5 and can't wait a few hours for the injection to end.
 

Zathalus

Member
LOL. How about Xbox fans and their UE5 PS5 demo laughing last year. Look is damn stupid now :/.
How many Xbox fans really laughed at the original PS5 demo? One or two dudes on Twitter? Is that worth getting worked up over? I recall most people praising the shit out of UE5 and the only real arguments were if it was only possible on a PS5 or not.
 

PaintTinJr

Member
Oh sorry, I misunderstood. Authoring the same asset with multiple UV would surely increase disk size and memory consumption, though. It's a compromise between the uniqueness of it all and disk size and memory consumption.
I don't think anyone should be expecting all assets to be unique so looking for ways to hide the repetition makes sense, not only from a memory consumption and disk space points of view but also from a manpower POV.
True, but the thing that seemed odd - in regards of series X - is that decals standout like a sore thumb and completely break the immersion IMHO, and have done since the beginning of the last-gen on top tier AAA games. Floor and walls have typically been areas that without impressive mix of real geometry and textures, or very high quality AF, make the visual spectacle less consistent, and if flat with decals, also make it a visual without coherent geometry to impact gameplay or even the animation warping.

Nanite fixing that issue for floors and walls, so seamlessly would seem like the first feature on the "must have" list IMO, even at the expense of dropping other VFX.
 

NEbeast

Member
Is that it? Xbox guys have been hyping this up so much! The demo even runs at a lower resolution at 30 fps. Man, all I've been hearing is how this is going to show the sx can run the demo better than how the ps5 was "only" 1440p 30fps.
Doctor Who Dw GIF by BBC America
 

Zathalus

Member
Is that it? Xbox guys have been hyping this up so much! The demo even runs at a lower resolution at 30 fps. Man, all I've been hearing is how this is going to show the sx can run the demo better than how the ps5 was "only" 1440p 30fps.
Doctor Who Dw GIF by BBC America
This demo ran at a average of 46fps, while the PS5 demo was not 1440p either. It was dynamic resolution with the average just coming in at under 1440p.
 
How many Xbox fans really laughed at the original PS5 demo? One or two dudes on Twitter? Is that worth getting worked up over? I recall most people praising the shit out of UE5 and the only real arguments were if it was only possible on a PS5 or not.

I remember this one :

It'll be interesting to see how the Xbox Series X handles Unreal Engine 5, but we're expecting better results than 1440p since Microsoft's console has a 2-3 teraflops advantage over the PS5. However, it's unclear if there's going to be an advantage. While the visuals are spectacular, it would've been nice to see 4K resolution and 60 FPS.


Asher Madan is from ex ICXM ( yuck ). How Xbox journalist can be so dumb. 2-3 teraflops advantage. LOL Why not 4? People claimed that PS5 is 8 TF console anyway. :/


I said nothing about the PS5 demo being anything other than incredible, the problem arose when fanboys claimed it could only be done on PS5. That was not true then or now. Still doesn't change the fact this Joe guy is a muppet.

Wasn't Tim Sweeney implied something similar??
 
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Zathalus

Member
I remember this one :




Asher Madan is from ex ICXM ( yuck ). How Xbox journalist can be so dumb. 2-3 teraflops advantage. LOL Why not 4? People claimed that PS5 is 8 TF console anyway. :/




Wasn't Tim Sweeney implied something similar??
Even in that article they said "it's unclear if there's going to be an advantage". Which is true, with the engine and optimization for it being so early, who knows what system will run what better in a few years.
 
Even in that article they said "it's unclear if there's going to be an advantage". Which is true, with the engine and optimization for it being so early, who knows what system will run what better in a few years.

He literally said afterwards what he wants with that "2-3 teraflops" advantage. I'm sure that author is now surprised in a bad way with that demo.
 
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One thing that I hope is going to disappear this gen is textures/shapes "shifting" and objects pop in.
I can live with it (Returnal made with UE 4; even Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart has some when I am looking for it) but I hope it is going to disappear gradually with next gen engines and current gen consoles as it feels old gen and completely outdated.


When watching this much vaunted and hyped first UE5 tech demo on Xbox Serie X, I noticed the textures/shapes "shifting" at 31 and 39 seconds. I was not even looking for imperfections, it just popped in the foreground.
This is the work of one of the most promising Xbox studio with their finest hardware, most advanced streaming techniques on a next gen engine... This is disappointing to say the least.
 
Good. The series feels dated. Time to shake things up.

I won't disagree with your sentiment. But the art style isn't the area I'd want them to do that.

Keep the gritty comic-book-like art style, but change up the game design, gameplay and story (the latter in particular has been pretty ass).

Go back to the locust hordes or a new enemy with the same level of uniqueness and consistency across enemy types in their visual design (the swarm are just shitty generic fleshy monsters with horribly generic visual design).

Go back to a horror-like atmosphere and gothic (almost WH40k) urban environment design. Tbf, look to properties like WH40K for inspiration if you can't come up with anything original on your own.
 
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ZywyPL

Banned
2_ So far, in terms of UE5, what was DEMONSTRATED by both consoles has proven that the I/O architecture in PS5 is crucial to UE5 features. So PC and next iterations of Series X needs to keep up with the tech and all platforms needs to move on from old tech including the ps5 needs to move on from the ps4.

During the yesterday's presentation the guy listed what eats up the most computing power, with precise render times even, highlighted what/where are the bottlenecks (some aren't even related to the engine itself), and none of the things have anything to do with the I/O, like Lumen or TSR, they even listed precise both fixed and streaming memory pools, which are just mere tens-hundreds of MB (hence why PC's with ordinary 500Mbps SATA SSD outperform consoles). A simple drag and drop from Megascan collection will give the results you see on countless YT vids, but those kind of creations don't have a single gameplay-related line of code, no practical application, no nothing, it's just a static mesh, nothing more, whereas this demo takes into account assets and workflow that indeed takes place during an actual game development, the foliage doesn't even use Nanite for example, which leaves place for actual physics and animation for the actual games.
 
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