After showing a new Unreal engine 5 and first details PS5 we have too many questions left. Given the fact that Epic games and Sony keep silence, we decided to discuss technology with a person from the industry. He became one of the oldest and most respected game developers in the Russian-speaking community. Vladimir Alyamkin, Tech Lead / Pushkin studio (MY.GAMES) He is not affiliated with Unreal Engine 5 in any way, therefore he can speak fluently, but at the same time his answers are based on the analysis of the shown video, available information and work experience, therefore this is a certain balanced opinion, but not exact knowledge.
Could you tell us what, in your opinion, is the main advantage of Unreal Engine 5 relative to UE4 and other engines available on the market? Why should developers switch to it, and users should wait for games on it? How much cooler will the graphics become? Can we see the development of physics and AI in new games?
The main advantage is the orientation towards a new generation of high-end. If you want to keep up with the times and focus on what will be relevant “tomorrow”, then your path is next to “anril”.
Changing the engine from 4 to 5 alone will not work: to see the “new generation of graphics”, you will have to wait for the release of games that will be developed with an eye on the possibilities of new hardware and technology. There’s no tumbler “now a new grafon”, alas .
But on the other hand, those games that will be guided entirely by the use of new pipelines, and will be able to “forget” about non-high-end devices (for example, be guided only by the latest generation of consoles), will be able to give a potentially new level of detail in graphics that has never been seen before in the real-time world.
About physics and AI in this context, while there is no question, there is no “revolution” new iron, unfortunately, does not carry.
What do you think Epic Games takes into account when developing a new engine? Most likely there were some requests from partners or users?
I am not affiliated with Epic Games and cannot answer this question otherwise than express my assumptions. “Epics” definitely work very closely with both developers and platform owners, and the very announcement of UE5 on PS5 in real time is a vivid confirmation of this: you can present such a pipeline only if you know what will happen on the new platform.
How will the new version of the engine affect developers, given the new features? Can studios save money or vice versa will they have to spend more resources on creating games?
You can not answer clearly. Game development does not get cheaper, on the contrary – it is constantly becoming more expensive. However, new technologies and updates bring more tools to increase iterative development and improve product quality. It is clear that those who are engaged in video production and “near” will become much easier, more convenient and cheaper to achieve the desired results. So far, no one has shown such things for real time.
One of the problems of the Unreal Engine (starting with the 3rd version), in my opinion, is the visible texture loading. This happens both on consoles and on powerful PCs with fast SSDs. What are the reasons for such things and will there be any changes in this plan on UE5?
This is not a problem of the engine, it is a problem of the volume of content or the quality of optimization of the final product. Conditionally, if you have two gigabytes of textures – it doesn’t matter which engine you have – it’s the time X to load them into memory. In the case of the entire technology of micropolygonal rendering – the requirement for download speed is raised further to the power. As we can see in the video announcement – it works for Epics. As with the rest – practice will show.
For many, the performance of the engine on different systems remains an important issue. UE5 technology is supported by smartphones, PC, Switch, Xbox One, PS4 and a new generation of consoles. How will the difference in iron affect games? What will the engine give the Nintendo Switch console and mobile phones? In particular, will performance not worsen?
In my opinion, it is worth considering UE5 as the same UE4, but “with additions” and cutting out part of the legacy code. In addition to high-end platforms. And for the rest, something is unlikely to change.
What gives the use of SSD in next-generation games on the same UE5? Do you think SSD speed will affect something? Or can it be all the same to play on the HDD?
A great example of why such an SSD is needed is just the video presentation of the fifth Unreal Engine. The presence of a fast SSD (as far as I remember, in PS5 we are talking about x2 speed relative to the “ordinary civilian” SATA-SSD) makes it possible to seamlessly apply such a thing as the shown micro-polygonal rendering. Moreover, the SSD is the reason Nanite happened. Such results can not be achieved on the HDD and (most likely) the “usual” SSD, while the same M.2 drives can cope with this even better than consoles.
Are regular SSDs a SATA-SSD? That is, for Nanit’s standard PC’s NVMe SSDs in M.2 slot are quite suitable?
Yes, that’s what this is all about 🙂
And what will Fortnite give the transition to UE5?
The ability to further grow and develop in the first place. If they stayed on UE4, then this would be such a step “we stopped the game in development, everything, this is the last day”. When switching to the fifth version, the relevance of all the technologies used is maintained and a completely global case of using the engine is supported.
What can you expect from providing third-party cross-play toolkit?
No need to wait for anything – just take it and use it. For those who are smaller – you can wait for ready integrations into the engines, for those who are larger – start using.
An important issue is raytracing on consoles. As I understand it, UE5 fully supports it? How RT is gluttonous on new systems? Or can the Lumen global lighting system replace ray tracing?
Nothing about rattrace is yet known, sheer speculation. The same “Lumen” solves some of the problems, but not all, and it is very likely that it will work in parallel with the possibility of using raytracing if available.
How much will retopology be needed for developers now, and will the technology for rendering polygons that fall into the camera be able to increase game performance at the current level of asset optimization?
1. The tasks of retopology do not go anywhere for the vast majority of platforms.
2. For high-end – these tasks will become different, but they will be.
3. If we are talking about Nanite – you can’t just take it and “apply” it to a finished game / asset. This is a qualitatively different approach, rather than optimizing “how to render millions instead of thousands”.
And, of course, everyone worries about the weight of games and patches. What could change?
Weight has grown, is growing and will continue to grow. But these changes will not be ordinal.
Thank you for the interesting interview!
Read also: All PlayStation 5 games: What to expect and what to look for on the PS5 – Part 1
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