How Epic got such amazing Unreal Engine 5 results on next-gen consoles

Watch this in full screen at 4K if at all possible.

After last week's somewhat blase showcase of in-development Xbox Series X software, our expectations for the coming generation of new game consoles were somewhat tempered. But those expectations got a significant boost this week with Epic Games' unveiling of a jaw-dropping real-time demo of its Unreal Engine 5 technology.

The engine, which Epic says will launch next year, was shown running on PlayStation 5 development hardware, though the company said the same general level of fidelity should be possible on the Xbox Series X and high-end PCs as well. And it shows how the state-of-the-art in graphical quality on those platforms is quickly advancing past resolution and frame rate counts and toward new levels of lighting and modeling detail.

The first pillar of Epic's new engine is what it's calling the Lumen system, a "fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes."

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