Epic Games’ Chief Technology Officer, Kim Liberi, has said that next-gen games can be “as believable and realistic as a movie,” thanks to new technology and Unreal Engine 5.
Speaking to the Official PlayStation Magazine UK (via Video Games Chronicle), Liberi said that the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X processing power will enable developers to create “entirely new gameplay concepts” by utilizing “fully dynamic environment and lighting, much-improved physics, smarter AI, and richer multiplayer experiences.” The result will be more immersive games that are photorealistic.
Liberi went on to point out the advantages of UE5’s Nanite technology.
For many years, the movie industry has been experimenting with Unreal Engine for previsualization and cinematic shot design, and then last year Jon Favreau and LucasFilm made the leap to use Unreal to generate final pixels for in-camera visual effects on The Mandalorian. Yet, there is still the challenge that the movie industry creates almost infinitely complex assets, and for real-time content, we need simplified polygon meshes and normal maps. With Nanite, a new breakthrough technology in Unreal Engine 5, we have removed the barriers. You can now create environments with full-quality cinematic assets and the engine does all the heavy lifting, resulting in some truly photorealistic results.
Liberi added that UE5 will be user-friendly for independent developers as well, who tend to perform a number of roles within small teams and need the “freedom” that UE5 will give them to make their games stand out.
UE5 will begin rolling out in 2021 for both next-gen and current-gen platforms.
[Source: VGC]
