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Unreal Engine 5 = Game Changer

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by DigitalAdam, May 13, 2020.

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  1. DigitalAdam

    DigitalAdam

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  2. Acissathar

    Acissathar

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    This also seems pretty big to me (not because I'll ever get anywhere close to it mattering, just in that it's a huge jump from the previous terms):

    "Unreal Engine royalties waived on first $1 million in game revenue. The new Unreal Engine license terms, which are retroactive to January 1, 2020, give game developers an unprecedented advantage over other engine license models."
     
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  3. Flurgle

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    Automatic LOD, and z-brush -> Game engine with no baking? Fully Dynamic GI? That sounds neat.

    It is awesome, but Unity does not necessarily need to have something better. It would be nice to have those features though. Unity has never really competed in the AAA realm, just look at the Steam top 100 for the past 5 years. They dominate in Mobile, VR, Indie, and have a lot of headway in other non-game related spaces.

    Edit: The bounce on the lighting seems to have a delay, is this more or less similar to other dynamic gi solutions?

    Also, I noticed the Fluid simulation seems pretty weak. Low poly, and possibly some TXAA artifacts on it?
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2020
  4. DigitalAdam

    DigitalAdam

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    I remember reading somewhere that Unity is working on a realtime GI system, but the unlimited detail is incredible. Not having the reduce high poly meshes and bake normals is an incredible time-saver.
     
  5. protopop

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    I think Unity chasing Unreal for the last few years is the Achilles heel of the engine. Unity had usability and broad reach. It may not look like unreal but it doesn’t have to: Unity can make beautiful looking games in its own way. A return to an un fractured unity that focuses in its own strengths instead of spreading itself too thin ina race to be something else is the way to support developers and asset store creators. We’ve created great things in Unity and want to keep doing so.
     
  6. Flurgle

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    The 500 statues thing was cheesy, and not really needed. Why did they not just have a room full of 500 statues, and light it up with the cool dynamic GI? It was super dark, and you could only see a handful at a time.
     
  7. Flurgle

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    @protopop Like I said above, Unity is dabbling in some AAA territory, that's true, but that's not its main business. It has domination in a lot of other areas, including the non-games space.

    I think Unity will do just fine, and in fact, I think it's never been in a better place. Unreal gives the Unity Technologies team some strong competition in high end visuals and fidelity, and that's a good thing. I hope they learn off each other, and get closer to parity in the next few years.
     
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  8. Passeridae

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    To be honest, I'm a bit sceptical about their new showcase. I mean, somehow almost nobody can reproduce what game engine developers show in such demos. And I am talking not only about Unreal now. The same goes for the "Book of the Dead" which looks the way it does because of the occlusion probes and some other custom stuff designed exclusively for that project. It has never appeared in the engine after that and no one was able to come up with something similar, as far as I know. As for Unreal, they had a showcase for UE4 a few years ago where they talked about millions of particles in a single frame for VFX, but I doubt there's even one single game made with UE4 which does that kind of stuff.
     
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  9. valarnur

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    This is important feature. I wish Unity SRP could also do this.
     
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  10. Flurgle

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    @valarus If I'm not mistaken, there is a fancy new conversion wizard for HDRP and URP, no? Have you seen the latest SRP?
     
  11. bluescrn

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    Still don't really want to have to go back to C++. And really don't want to use Blueprints...

    Unity's killer feature is its C# support. (It used to also be the ease-of-use/learning, but it's rapidly getting rather more complex these days)

    But there's also huge numbers of Unity devs focused on mobile (or indie stuff with less graphical requirements), for whom the shiny new top-end graphics features are irrelevant.
     
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  12. Shizola

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  13. Flurgle

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    @Shizola That's tied to the Epic Games Store right? How popular is that? Its main pull is still the Fortnite community, right?

    I don't think it's that attractive, unless you're doing a game like a high end FPS maybe
     
  14. Murgilod

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    They had an entire part near the end where the room ended up getting illuminated.
     
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  15. valarnur

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    No, I haven't. I'm on 19.3 HDRP 7.31. It would be nice to upgrade to 20.2 HDRP 9 without having troubles.
     
  16. Flurgle

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    @Murgilod Absolutely, that scene looks awesome. Still, saying there are 500 statues, and making a room dark where you can see a handful of statues, is not really impressive.
     
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  17. TwiiK

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    Ehh, let me know when we can actually play any games that look like that.

    I'm a total skeptic. Like they've just silently solved all of the issues plaguing game development? No aliasing, no temporal artifacts, no artifacts of any kind except for some slight lag in the GI? And how big is the tech demo? A terabyte? 8k textures, raw data models... Who can work with that? Or even download it to their consoles? 3ds Max or Blender basically crash when you try working with models straight out of ZBrush. And how are they texturing the models? Are they unwrapping 30 million triangle models? And for any skinned characters you'd still need to retopologize them to be able to animate them I imagine. Otherwise how would you maintain proper deformations? And what about platform support? Most developers, AAA included, are going to want to target as many platforms as possible and this seems like something that, if it's not complete bullshit, would be reserved for the highest end devices and all other devices would still require traditional workflows so are you going to have to support both the old workflows and this new workflow to make a game supporting this? There are so many questions I'll reserve my judgement until I see it with my own eyes, I guess. :)

    And as an indie game developer, or for most game developer I imagine, ease of use is the most important feature as I'll never have access to the manpower needed to work with assets and projects of that scale, nor am I even interested in that as I will always lag behind the AAA developers who have hundreds of people staying on top of what's bleeding edge while I would continuously be chasing after them.

    The GI system sounds like a winner though if it works like they claim. Completely dynamic lighting benefits everyone. Not having to bake stuff, place light probes etc. etc. just frees up so much time.

    What's bigger news in my opinion is that Unreal Engine is removing the royalties for your first $1 million dollars of revenue, essentially making the engine completely free for most people.
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2020
  18. GCatz

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    amazing! this is how you get triple AAA to use your engine

    hope unity will also deliver with their ECS they took years to make,
    sure gonna be game changer having 10,000 cubes instead of 1000 :/
     
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  19. MrGuardianX

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    Well Unreal is surely dominant in the consoles market but unless they make their engine not to lag on mobile platforms, the future of Unity is secured.
     
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  20. Murgilod

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    They show the statues thirty seconds later in a scene with dynamic lighting.

     
  21. Flurgle

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    @Murgilod Yup I saw. That's still not 500 statues, but looks amazing. I don't see your point here trying to debunk me. I agree with you, it looks awesome, and is revolutionary tech if it works. Let's agree to disagree until I get my 500 statue scene with full lighting.
     
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  22. xVergilx

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    Same. I bet its all just clever smokes and mirrors. Terrabyte games coming soon™?
    Unless some clever compression is applied while shipping / in builds. Which may be.

    Or it could be just automation of the workflow. Like a sophisticated auto-lod.

    Still, would like to know how they pulled it off.

    Also, Unity not having a proper realtime GI with deprecation Enlighten will hinder some of the AAA potential.
    And with the license change, we might see some major shifting of AA PC / VR / Console game makers towards Unreal.
     
    Last edited: May 13, 2020
  23. rob8861

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    I am more curious to find out how (if at all) Unity Technologies going to respond to UE5 :)

    Unreal Engine 5 = "Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II"
    Unity 2021 = "Cessna 172"

    they both serve a purpose but the F-35 is just superior in every aspect :)
     
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  24. Flurgle

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    @xVergilx I don't think it's smoke and mirrors. It's just that they are doing something similar to what other engine devs do when they show off their tech: A linear level, with a character walking through it. It's the sexiest way to do it.
     
  25. Flurgle

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    @rob8861 They don't need to respond, they have an incredible tool with many use cases well beyond AAA. They are not going to fold because PS5 devs choose UE5 over Unity.
     
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  26. Murgilod

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    Except cost in both acquisition and maintenance, versatility outside of combat and reconnaissance, noise levels...
     
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  27. xVergilx

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    Well, you can see less detail in the distance. I'd bet it just an auto-lod upto desired res / tri count.

    The only question is how it is implemented.

    On the GI support side, not I'm suprised or impressed.
    (Proper) Realtime GI already here, its just a matter of decision of spending resources on it.
    If enthusiasts can handle something DDGI, or RTX based one (PS5 has it) thats just a matter of cash+time spent on the implementation.

    TL;DR: It boils down to the workflow. Is it really that good for the artists?
    Or just another gimmick?

    If it has nasty side-effects, like permanent DoF because of it, or TAA that cannot be turned off, that won't be nice.
     
  28. Shizola

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    @Flurgle

    "Our mission is to enable developers to achieve the quality and depth of cross-platform experiences that we’ve built for Fortnite, and to make the services available for free for use with all engines, all stores, and all account services."
     
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  29. Peter77

    Peter77

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    But does the editor have a Light theme?
     
  30. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    It absolutely wrecks current Unity in every single capacity except low power devices. I'm very impressed and see things I've been asking for a long time taken seriously. I guess most devs asked for these difficult things.

    It'll be in 2022 almost before we can get our hands on these tools but if I was making a PS5 title, of course I would use UE5 without any hesistation at all, whatsoever. The reason is because it takes all the pain out of authoring the game and you don't care about lod or texture or even lighting any more.

    Absolutely astonished and very impressed. Well done Epic and Sony.


    Ball's in your court Unity. Good luck in next 2 years I guess!
     
  31. ADNCG

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    Asking the real questions here.
     
  32. rob8861

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    @Flurgle can you really blame the PS5 dev for choosing UE5? I mean, it is light years ahead of Unity in tech and capabilities. Also, I am pretty sure they evaluated Unity as well but ultimately chose UE5 because it really does justice to PS5.
     
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  33. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Course I'll still use Unity but if Unity hasn't significantly caught up in 2 years time with Shader Graph, with GI, with asset management then it'll be hard to justify Unity. These are simple facts. Epic focused on user pain and fixed that completely while somehow making performance all the engine's responsibility and not the dev, which is a stunning thing really.

    Basically that demo we saw, could be done by a small team (it was, with all the free quixel assets). But the difference is nobody needed to piss about with LODS or baking, two areas which consume unholy amounts of dev time, especially small teams.

    Let's not forget we don't have to shoot for terabyte models. Even being able to just throw regular asset store models in and have it all perfectly keep framerate and lighting is just stunning.
     
  34. G-Mika

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    They say "We have instant global illumination"

    -> The video shows delay and lag in the global illumination :D

    They say artists don't have to worry about the number of polygons

    -> They copy the exact same model everywhere :D

    This is marketing material. (Unlimited Details Style)

    Not that Unity won't do the same :cool:

    It looks good tho, they definitively have a good next gen graphics engine.
     
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  35. protopop

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    If unreal Engine was indisputably better than unity then we’d all be using it. But we’re not. Both engines have they’re strengths and weaknesses. What’s important here is not how unity can compare to unreal but what unity can do uniquely and keep doing that well. Double down on accessibility, usability, support asset store devs, c#, better forward and backward compatibility, less fracturing And a return to the it just works magic, maintain mobile performance etc... these are all areas where unity shows it’s strength.
     
  36. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    So yeah instead of pulling down Epic's amazing strides, I wanna challenge Unity to meet it.

    Stop defending Unity and start helping Unity raise to the challenge, I say.
     
  37. rob8861

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    that's a game changer right there. with how things going on for Unity (20% production ready and 80% preview ) it will take them another decade to reach UE5 capabilities. If Unity doesn't up their game FAST, they will become a bottom feeder engine very quickly.
     
  38. protopop

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    To be fair a slight lag in global illumination is instant relative to minutes/hours of baking gi. Plus we don’t even have GI anymore in Unity. It’s too bad because The real-time GI in Unity looked great before it was removed.
     
  39. rob8861

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    THANK YOU! That's why you have competition, because it encourages INNOVATION.
     
  40. ADNCG

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    They are different engines with different ideas of their target market. Stop comparing them in a general way.
     
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  41. bluescrn

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    But in the real world, the Cessna is usually the best choice. There's a lot of beginner/intermediate/recreational pilots with limited skills/experience/budget who can achieve their goals much more easily with the simpler and less powerful plane.
     
  42. protopop

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    When I was a kid I would lift up a big rock in the garden, and tons of ants would scramble to remove their white oval eggs into the deeper tunnels, just a sudden flurry of activity.

    It kind of feels like we’re acting like this in the unity community hearing the unreal 5 news
     
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  43. xVergilx

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    "Unnamed Cessna Game" coming soon™



    honk
     
  44. Ryiah

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  45. Flurgle

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    No one is defending Unity. They literally have not had any major high budget AAA titles like UE4 has. This is something they have just started getting into in the past few years. This doesn't effect Unity's bottom line ... like at all. It's an area that could in the future. Let's not act like this is the end of the world.
     
  46. xVergilx

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  47. protopop

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    But I think that’s what has harmed unity internally. I can’t know for sure but my instinct says the reason why Unity is fractured is because they have been comparing them selves to unreal and making decisions based on chasing that. I think a lot of the new tech unity has created is exciting and useful. But it also has to work and be stable and for that you have to look inside yourself not at others and fix what is inside you first. Even unreal for all this cool technology, if it’s unstable and buggy it won’t work. And if it’s usable and stable it will be amazing.
     
  48. Ryiah

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    We're all going to need better storage drives. Console ports may very well be completely unplayable on HDDs and possibly even SATA SSDs due to being designed around NVMe SSDs.
     
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  49. rob8861

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    the main issue I have with unity is that 80% of the engine is "preview" and it takes ages for new features to become production-ready
     
  50. valarnur

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    Yes, UE5 editor skin itself reacts to global illumination.
     
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