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Was the switch to Unreal Engine 5 a mistake?

Spyxos

Spyxos

Gold Member
So far, I have hardly liked any Unreal Engine 5 games. They have very high hardware requirements and run barely on mid-range PCs and not exactly great on the consoles. They also look just ok visually. The Matrix demo was impressive and Fornite in Ue5 looks good too, but all the rest so far has been more than disappointing at least for me. Did Ue5 impress you?
 
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Z

Zones

Member
It requires a higher spec than the base PS5/XSX and most PCs out there, so as of right now, the answer is an emphatic…

yes-happy.gif
 
hinch7

hinch7

Member
If it hastens up game development I'm all for it. Performance be damned. But also have a good enough PC to run UE5 games at decent fidelity so theres that.

Plus the faster we move to GI in games and away from baked assets plus crappy LOD's the better.
 
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MiguelItUp

MiguelItUp

Member
Not at all, it's still early on, I feel like it's only going to get better with time. Much like the previous UEs.

It's impressed me, but in very small ways. Honestly, the past few generations I haven't had anything really impress me, which sucks. I miss the previous generations where we saw a ton of large advancements in engines and physics that were pretty mind blowing. Especially at the time.

I think the coolest engine things I've seen thus far (that don't revolve around lighting and adjacent details) have been the smoke in CS2, as well as the fluid in the molotov and fluid in bottles on Alyx.
 
thicc_girls_are_teh_best

thicc_girls_are_teh_best

Gold Member
I think the engine's kinda overrated (hard to say that so early, I'm just saying based on the hype); Decima Engine has been putting in some amazing work and the overall two best-looking games so far this gen (HFW: Burning Shores and Spiderman 2) don't even use Unreal Engine 5.

That said, I admit it's still early days for UE5 and I expect studios like The Coalition to really make it sing a few years out. I think CDPR will also be one of those premier UE5 devs if their next game is using it and not the Red Engine. IIRC at least one or two of Sony's studios are using UE5 as well; since we know how great Sony's teams are with tech then they're automatically going to be putting out some of the best UE5-based stuff too once it's ready.

Only thing is all of those games will take time. By the time any come out we'll probably see similar or better results with engines like Decima, or Insomniac's proprietary engine (Wolverine), or Naughty Dog's. Still though, UE5 will be a boon for AA and smaller indie studios, and most 3P AAA developers so we're bound to see some great stuff sooner rather than later ("great" as in true leaps forward visually vs. stuff like Plague Tale: Requiem which look great but not "holy crap that's next gen!" great).
 
Krappadizzle

Krappadizzle

Member
Episode 2 Nbc GIF by The Office


Engine just isn't prepared for the general hardware. It'll be better when the baseline is moved, I'll say I'd rather have an UE4 game that looks and runs great than an UE5 that chugs along and barely lets me enjoy a game. I'll say Remnant 2 plays pretty well for me and it's been the first UE5 game that I can point to that I enjoy and don't feel is hampered by the tech.
 
S

SABRE220

Member
Honestly, the engine has it all to prove so far this gen, initially it was hyped as the magic pill engine for this gen which would make developing games much easier, streamlined, and deliver amazing visuals with immense flexibility we all bought into the hype even developers. In practice, it has delivered underwhelming visuals and abysmal performance that chokes the consoles and even pcs. The only ones who seem to be able to use it well ironically are epic themselves and thats not a good look but the output is a far cry from the promised land we were sold.

Theoretically, it should be able to deliver amazing results on the consoles but....well we are waiting.
 
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Mortisfacio

Mortisfacio

Member
Jinzo Prime said:
It looks great, but performance is what is being questioned here. I'm afraid to buy a UE5 game unless it has been thoroughly benchmarked.
Click to expand...

Exactly. At this point no matter how good a game looks, just being Unreal Engine I won't buy day 1 until I see digital foundry or similar benchmarks.
 
S

SABRE220

Member
Celcius said:
I know the engine hasn't performed the best so far but I'm hoping it improves as time goes on
Click to expand...
Its the hope that kills ya. Its halfway into the gen and I kept the hope of seeing a clear generational leap as was hyped by devs and journalists at launch like the rebirth demo and well now with the upgraded engine were nowhere close.

That being said what a pleasant surprise it would be to see visuals on the level of the matrix demo and the rebirth demo by late gen.
 
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adamsapple

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
No, the switch is fine, but developers have to pick and choose which feature set to use, cause the console(s) aren't exactly strong enough to run all of its suites at higher than DRS 720p 900p~ at 60 FPS or thereabout (see Immortals of Aveum).

It's probably gonna be either Epic themselves, or a studio dedicated to UE in a capacity that their work enhances the engine itself, like The Coalition, who will probably make the first exemplary projects on it.
 
diffusionx

diffusionx

Gold Member
adamsapple said:
No, the switch is fine, but developers have to pick and choose which feature set to use, cause the console(s) aren't exactly strong enough to run all of its suites at higher than DRS 720p 900p~ at 60 FPS or thereabout (see Immortals of Aveum).

It's probably gonna be either Epic themselves, or a studio dedicated to UE in a capacity that their work enhances the engine itself, like The Coalition, who will probably make the first exemplary projects on it.
Click to expand...
Fortnite runs on UE5 so....

anyway was UE5 the most overhyped nothingburger of the generation? Has to be. I'm sure we will get a showcase game at some point out of it this gen, but it's 3 years in and other devs are doing showcase work with their own tech (like SM2).
 
N

Neilg

Member
I work with it day to day.

It was massively overhyped and not ready for prime time. It is not an easy process to port over to it, and attempting to use the same features as 4.27 results in worse performance - even using nanite and other new optimisations.
Towards the end of this gen it might be ready.

The features are legitimately forward thinking, but lumen still breaks in various conditions and there's fuckall you can do to fix it except for allowing performance to drop to 30fps on a 4090 or turning lumen off. There's lots I could go into but attempting to use it for production work has been 2 steps forward and one step back with every point release.
 
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C

CGNoire

Member
Lokaum D+ said:
no, but devs need more time to implement shit and make it work, time that corpo won't give them.

also, ppl need to stop bringing Matrix up as a metric of quality, that wasnt a game, it was just a tech demo.
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Time and time again its been noted that Epic left the nessessary overhead for it to support a full fledged game and thats before we start talking about disabling the overkill of car ai used in the demo.
 
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StueyDuck

StueyDuck

Member
Hasn't it only been like 3-4 games Overall, none of them really big massive developers who know how to squeeze the most out of UE, besides fortnite.

Once we see what the coalition does for example with the tech will really be telling if the engine is up to the task
 
L*][*N*K

L*][*N*K

Banned
You disliking those games is not the engine's fault, good games and shit games can be made with the same engine.
 
Barakov

Barakov

Gold Member
Spyxos said:
So far, I have hardly liked any Unreal Engine 5 games. They have very high hardware requirements and run barely on mid-range PCs and not exactly great on the consoles. They also look just ok visually. The Matrix demo was impressive and Fornite in Ue5 looks good too, but all the rest so far has been more than disappointing at least for me. Did Ue5 impress you?
Click to expand...
Seems that way. There are devs who use it effectively on console, such is the case with Remnant II BUT it seems most struggle with it. I'd say stick with unreal 4 until PS6 and Xbox Next.
 
Negotiator101

Negotiator101

Member
Well let's see what the Coalition can do with it before writing it off and we've all seen how incredible Hellblade 2 looks. Takes time to make these games.
 
FingerBang

FingerBang

Member
It's not an engine problem. Most of the games you're talking about didn't start development on UE5, they updated halfway through to take advantage of some of the features but lacking the experience to optimize them for the hardware.

I remember UE4 being criticized because "too heavy" for the PS4/XBO generation, it was similar to what we're seeing today. By the end of the generation no one was thinking UE4 was a mistake or too much for the consoles
 
Robb

Robb

Gold Member
Nah, while I haven’t been very impressed yet I think it’s mostly to do with game development taking so much longer today in combination with the new tools.

We used to get an entire trilogy of AAA games in a single generation, and devs improved in using the tech each time. Today we’re lucky if we get two, and if so the second one will likely be cross-gen and not seem very impressive anyway since it’s then tied to old hardware.
 
E-Cat

E-Cat

Member
Neilg said:
I work with it day to day.

It was massively overhyped and not ready for prime time. It is not an easy process to port over to it, and attempting to use the same features as 4.27 results in worse performance - even using nanite and other new optimisations.
Towards the end of this gen it might be ready.
Click to expand...
So, the PS6 generation is where UE5 will truly shine?

I wonder if we'll get a UE6 refresh mid-gen again.
 
magnumpy

magnumpy

Member
the engine is very forward thinking. it will be very good in the coming years, although perhaps not so much in 2023 when the ability to run your games at 90+ FPS is for some reason regarded as the height of video gaming.

silly people don't realize that video games have yet to achieve their true ultimate final form of ~240 fps with the PS5 Pro. of course, 240 fps is just a stepping stone towards 500 fps, which in turn will only lay the foundation for 20,000 fps, but they have to start somewhere...
 
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