That amazing UE5 tech demo was only as GPU-intensive as Fortnite

Jacob Fox of PCGamesN writes, "We recently spoke to Epic Games and learnt a little more about making Unreal Engine 5. Vice president of engineering Nick Penwarden said, “I can say that the GPU time spent rendering geometry in our UE5 demo is similar to the geometry rendering budget for Fortnite running at 60fps on consoles.” Let’s give ourselves a moment for that to sink in."

[Sonyslave3]

Wait if that the case why it ran in 1440p and 24fps and not 4k and 30fps lol the demo had no ai or anything complex going on as far gameplay.

[timotim]

Yeah, how bout that. Considering that XGS will heavily use this engine in the next generation...I hope its not a sign of things to come. I dont want to see Epic's vision of the future with huge expansive worlds thats visual feast for the eyes, yet has very little gameplay involved.

[RazzerRedux]

And yet Digital Foundry said they had to magnify the 1440p image from the demo in PhotoShop to tell the difference between it and the lossless 2160p version of the same image.

https://youtu.be/zCllBRdyEX...

Edit: And let's be clear. Pendwarden referenced "rendering geometry" specifically. This not the entirety of the GPU as the title suggests and does not account for ray tracing.

[IRetrouk]

Hold on, the unreal engine ran at 30fps, and it was playable, it was doing plenty, your thinking of the hellblade "in engine" video, that was what was running at 1440p and 24fps, and had absolutely no interactivity at all, funny that though, didnt see anyone that mentions this playable demos resolution and framerate or lack of features mention hellblades at all hmm🤔 wonder why🤷‍♂️

[DJStotty]

Hellblade was a trailer not gameplay lmao, how can you even compare that to a playable demo?

[IRetrouk]

I'm not comparing the content in that way though am I? I'm pointing out the fact that this demo is trash because of being 1440p and 30fps, yet nothing at all was said about the hellblade video that was running 1440p 24fps by the same people, let's not pretend that a lot of those same people were not also
claiming the hellblade video was an actual representation of what the game looks like.... some even went as far and said gameplay, but again, no issue with it being 1440p and 24fps....but yeah, pick on the imaginary comparison of the games and not the hypocrisy I actually pointed out....

[DJStotty]

My point is, it was a bad example to use a pre-rendered trailer in your argument. A game trailer can be set to any resolution and is not representative of final product. Neither is the UE5 playable demo.

I did not think the UE5 demo was "trash" and i did not even realise what fps or resolution it was running at as i was too focused on looking at the actual tech.

And not once did i personally think of the Hellblade trailer as gameplay, it was even stated the trailer was in-engine. That was clear as day to anyone that watched it at the time.

People that target either a) a tech reveal of a game engine's resolution/fps, or B) a game trailer's resolution/fps are just looking for something to facilitate their fanboy ego, and reaffirm their dedication to a box of plastic with a name tag on it.

Edit :

I apologise, as you mentioned both the tech demo, and the Hellblade trailer in the same sentence, i assumed you were trying to draw up a direct comparison between the 2, whilst trying to denounce Hellblade of any "features", whilst confirming they were in the playable tech demo.

I must take care in future comments before i reply, and also proof read my work.

[IRetrouk]

Thats ok dude, I would have explained myself further, text can be hard to understand sometimes, not everyone writes the same way online, it can be difficult to follow what someone means, happens🤷‍♂️

[L7CHAPEL]

Bottom line, in all actuality:
they're tech demo didn't show Jack shit, just the [possibilities] of what [could] be done on actual hardware...
At some point in time.

sorry, it's just...
the presentation was some snake oil salesman bullshit, that's all there is to it.

Show me something:
#1. running on actual hardware.
#2. being played on actual hardware.

[RazzerRedux]

It was running on a PS5. What have you seen actually running on XSX? Nothing.

[Zodiac]

Is it appropriate to compare these two like that? One was extremely short, prepared and designed to be briefly shown off. The other is a constantly live, constantly moving game with lots of players. Can someone who knows something about the ins and outs comment of any of this is relevant? Lol.

[rainslacker]

He's just talking about the geometry rendering. He's not saying that the amount of power being used as a whole is equivalent.

[harmny]

God these people can't read. N4g is sad

[I_am_Batman]

Rendering budget means the time you have to render a frame. For 30fps games that's ~33 milliseconds or one-thirtieth of a second. Every rendered frame is a combination of different render tasks one of which is rendering the geometry (polygons). All render tasks combined have to be finished in those 33ms or the framerate will drop.

His statement is fairly vague, but it sounds to me like he is saying that the amount of time it takes the PS5 to render the geometry of the tech demo is comparable to the amount of time it takes Fortnite to render it's geometry on current gen consoles.

That would suggest that Nanite is fairly efficient, because Fortnite is running at 60fps on current gen consoles, which means that it's render budget is only half of any 30fps game (~17ms).

[Zodiac]

Thank you for clearing that up!

[Felix_Argyle_Catbro]

Yet it still didn't run at 60fps?

[borneFROMblood]

8 months with few people only and no optimization
you cant compare that to 3-5 years, 100-1000 teams of people and with specialists in optimizing
kinda logical.

[GOULDYBOBS]

You've been promised 4k 60fps since ps4 pro and xbox whatever

[bneals]

Suddenly 60fps isn't important. Seems like all of the articles are about SSDs, no loading times, and the tempest engine/audio tracing. I'm by no means saying that such things aren't exciting. I'm merely pointing out that the console makers have done a great job of moving the goal posts of what "next gen" means.

[akaFullMetal]

Wow, means ue5 will be very versatile and possible means switch may get some games with how efficient it is.

[Michiel1989]

cause its prerendered.....watching a movie on your pc also costs your gpu hardly anything.....even if that movie has the best looking cgi ever

[stuna1]

It wasn't pre rendered, it was interactive and fully running on a early PS5 dev kit! Which was reported to be less powerful than the PS5 retail console that will release later this year. On top of that, assets were rendered in 8 k.

[Bathyj]

Wow. Just when I'd thought I'd read it all.

[Sunny_D]

You convinced me most of the people on this site have no clue what real time or pre rendered means.

[Michiel1989]

just because I got one thing incorrect?

[RazzerRedux]

"just because I got one thing incorrect?"

One thing? That was the only point you tried to make and it was wrong. Lol

[Michiel1989]

who are you?

[Hakuoro]

There is no way that is true, something is being lost in translation or left out from the interview to make it click baitable.

[IRetrouk]

They are talking about the nanite geometry tech not the whole engine running.

[milohighclub]

Still mega impressive though. Weren't there billions of triangles in some of it? Statues alone been like a million polys or something?
Meaning they can now run millions of triangles in the same time it currently takes to render whatever fortnite is (couple hundred thousand?)

[IRetrouk]

Oh yeah the tech is impressive no doubt, but the headline doesnt really explain what the dev is talking about, was just letting hakuoro know.

[anast]

Why can't it run at 10000 FPS!?!

[RaidenBlack]

Because Doom Eternal runs at 9000 fps max.
And you don't want to piss off the Doom guy.

[beanplant]

What about cpu intensive?

[airshiraz]

i think they r not bluffing.there has been great advancements in software aspect of this new gen even more than hardware aspect .the gpu of ps5 is around five times better than ps4 but these crazy software advancements can make it even 20 times better maybe .

[Acecalibur]

Sold.

[airshiraz]

u know this gen something crazy may happen.that volumetric video technology may become reality so we will be able to film and walk and game in the real scenes .so realistic graphics may become pointless,just film the enviornment and jump in it .its closer than we think

[cooperdnizzle]

they have already done this in games. Did it back in the 90's in fact and it's terrible. Had this conversation years ago with my brother and we both agree now that it would kill games if that's how they moved forward. That's just like saying don't make a cartoon just shoot it. Nah, games will always be games and made from an artist hyperrealism/ photo realism but never just playing a movie. They already have games doing that and you lose a lot of artistic creativity. I like video games, if i want to watch a movie ill watch a movie.

[airshiraz]

its not the 90s crap .its a serious shit.its like watching a vr movie but to be able to move around and walk there.its gonna change movie industry but not sure about games .there will always be graphics but this tech is a game changer .

[Father__Merrin]

Can't wait for full on next gen games to start following in. This gen I've not really taken to consoles as much as the ps360 gen funnily enough I've used pc more but hopefully the ps5 can rekindle that new fresh console feel of the ps3 having constant games getting released for it.

[Master-Tonberry]

Lot's of very misleading headlines about this.

Nick Penwarden, Epic's VP of engineering said “I can say that the GPU time spent rendering geometry in our UE5 demo is similar to the geometry rendering budget for Fortnite running at 60fps on consoles.”

That's hugely impressive, but it does NOT mean that the entire UE5 tech demo only requires the same specs to run as the console version of Fortnite, which is what the headlines would lead you to believe.

Once you add the huge number of other elements on top of the basic geometry rendering such as the Lumen lighting system (which uses a form of ray tracing) i suspect the engines GPU demands will be far higher than a relatively simplistic game like Fornite. At least when it's being used to produce the sort of fidelity seen in the tech demo.

[Minute Man 721]

Did Epic release the specs to run U5 yet?

[Sophisticated_Chap]

Great news for people using older GPUs.

[BrainSyphoned]

Epic:Please still think about our game

[Battlestar23]

Very misleading headline. https://twitter.com/TimSwee...

[OB1Biker]

I think the article is misleading. He was talking about Nanite:

'Nick Penwarden tells us. “In fact, enabling Nanite on existing scenes can be a performance win. I can say that the GPU time spent rendering geometry in our UE5 demo is similar to the geometry rendering budget for Fortnite running at 60fps on consoles.”'

https://www.pcgamesn.com/ma...

[Bismarn]

but is it as install size intensive as Fortnite? If so don't care.

[Phantom68]

People are not understanding what this means. It does not mean that any device that can run Fortnite can also run that demo. It means that, if developers optimize their game well and use the power of SSD, than UE5 will reduce the GPU workload however you still need a setup similar to PS5 or better to be able to achieve THAT level of detail.

[FanboySpotter]

We'll see real ue5 games next gen since most xbox studios are confirmed for it. Rather see a ue5 game than a tech demo since realistically.. sony using ue for first party titles is too rare so this tech demo would be false hope in that sense. I think only days gone was ue

[chiefJohn117]

Sooo basically XO and PS4 could run it no issue....

[ShadowWolf712]

Somehow people always wind up back at square 1 on this topic.
1.This headline's a tad misleading. It was only the geometry rendering that was as intensive as Fortnite.
2. The fact that the GPU wasn't doing all of the heavy lifting means something else was making this possible.
3. I'd tell you to guess what that is, but somehow I doubt we'd make progress.

[iQuasar]

I'd like to change my G for a C Pat.

[nibblo]

Impressive but geometry is only one thing in the pipeline how about all the textures and lighting?

[iQuasar]

So let me get this straight. A 1440p/30 UE5 demo rendering is as fast as Fornite 60fps, what exactly? Because Fortnite uses dynamic resolution on the current gen consoles to achieve that magic 60fps, let alone with lower settings than a PC. So the rendering-per-second stress is greatly reduced. How am I supposed to be impressed?

[hennessey86]

so why was it locked to 30fps then?

[343_Guilty_Spark]

Was the demo running at 60 fps?

[L7CHAPEL]

And there it is...
it's amazing how much arguing back and forth there was over this, and it
just being a simple representation of one console's hardware, (and probably not the best one) under the best circumstances.
you could arguably make a Target render video that looked almost identical to that, with current hardware of the high-end consoles.
it always comes back to the same answer:

we're going to see what everyone and everything can really do, when the games start releasing 🤗

And not before.

[Thundercat77]

I don't understand why Xbox fans hate that demo so much of it was on Xbox series x they would be praising it.

[Petebloodyonion]

I don't understand why PPL want a playable demo of the U5 on PS5 to prove that it was made on PS5.
Of course, the demo could run on a ps5, the real question is does the same demo can run today on a good computer?

My bet is, despite Sweeney's claims, is an easy yes.
But Pete! there's no point for Sweeney to lie since there's no money deal involved with Sony.
Actually, there's a big reason to lie and it's called Epic Game Store versus Steam and more importantly the possibility of securing the exclusivity of possible games like Horizon Zero Dawn or other PS4(5) port to PC.

Just to enforce my point there are lots of respectable Youtubers and some websites that are reporting that reviewers that gave negative critics to TLOU2 were contacted by Sony's representative to explain why they gave the score
And another story that at this moment only the reviewer that gave TLOU2 great score got reviews code for ghost of tsushima while others are still waiting.

And before replying with hate do please check links

https://www.polygon.com/202...

https://www.altchar.com/gam...

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[Lionsguard]

They should definitely include this as a playable demo with the PS5 release.

[agnosticgamer]

Keep in mind the mind blowing demo did not hit 4k or 60 fps.

[LightofDarkness]

THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT RENDERING GEOMETRY ALONE. This does not include all of the expensive shader and lighting effects like Lumen, nor the physical water and cloth simulations. Pure polygons aren't what tend to kill your GPU, it's lighting and shading them that does it.

[itsmebryan]

I read the whole article and the title is not clear. It said the demo is as GPU intensive as "Fortnight" at 60fps It never stated Fortnight at what resolution.

Also if that is the case why is the demo only running at 1440p @30fps and no ray tracing you can do that on current generation consoles. Shouldn't the demo run at 4k and 60fps to showcase next gen consoles?

The more information I read the less impressed I am with the demo. What do you guys think?

[kryteris]

then why run it at 30fps?