Unreal Fest 2025 is in full swing. Epic Video games is just not solely giving a glimpse of the graphical splendor of The Witcher 4, but additionally letting Unreal Engine 5.6 off the leash.
Unreal Fest 2025 kicked off at this time in Orlando. Naturally, the builders at Epic Video games had been centered on the brand new options of Unreal Engine and The Witcher 4, which had already been introduced forward of the festivities.
The Witcher 4: A technical demo in Unreal Engine 5.6
Absolutely the spotlight of the State of Unreal keynote was undoubtedly the demonstration of The Witcher 4
- Not like earlier bulletins with pre-rendered trailers, CD Projekt Crimson and Epic Video games offered scenes from the present state of growth of the sport.
- Nonetheless, it needs to be famous that the photographs proven are a technical presentation within the context of Unreal Engine 5.6 and never precise gameplay, as CD Projekt Crimson explains within the accompanying announcement.
The tech demo took gamers to the beforehand unknown area of Kovir, the place protagonist Ciri travels by snow-covered mountain landscapes and dense forests along with her horse Kelpie.
Unreal Engine 5.6: Concentrate on efficiency and open-world growth
Alongside the Witcher demo, Epic Video games introduced the speedy availability of Unreal Engine 5.6. In response to the announcement, the brand new model focuses on optimizing open-world video games and attaining constant 60 FPS efficiency on present console {hardware}.
Lumen optimizations
Some of the essential enhancements issues the lumen system for international illumination:
- In response to Epic Video games, the hardware-based ray tracing implementation has been essentially redesigned to remove CPU bottlenecks.
- The optimizations are meant to convey the {hardware} ray tracing variant of Lumen as much as the efficiency stage of the software-based resolution, liberating up corresponding CPU assets for different programs.
“Quick Geometry Streaming Plugin”
One other key function of Unreal Engine 5.6 is the (nonetheless experimental) “Quick Geometry Streaming Plugin.”
- In response to the builders, this method permits giant quantities of static geometry to be loaded quicker and with extra constant body charges at runtime.
- For open-world video games, Epic Video games guarantees smoother transitions between completely different areas with out annoying loading occasions or body charge drops.
Renderer parallelization and extra
The Render {Hardware} Interface (RHI) has been extensively reworked to raised make the most of the multithreading capabilities of contemporary {hardware}. Beforehand, sure rendering operations had been restricted to the render thread, although present graphics APIs comparable to DirectX 12, Vulkan, and Metallic assist parallel processing. These limitations have been eliminated in model 5.6, as Epic Video games explains within the launch notes
“MetaHuman Creator,” Epic’s instrument for creating photorealistic digital people, has additionally obtained recent updates. The system is now straight built-in into the Unreal Editor and presents new parametric physique programs and improved visible high quality.
- MetaHuman is utilized in The Witcher 4 to render NPCs, giving even minor characters a excessive diploma of realism.
- The brand new MetaHuman Animator, alternatively, permits real-time workflows for facial and physique animation.
One other facet of the Witcher 4 demo was the dense vegetation within the forest areas. That is made potential by “Nanite Foliage,” a newly added extension to the Nanite virtualization system. The system is designed to render extraordinarily detailed bushes and vegetation in giant numbers with none lack of efficiency.
Nanite Foliage additionally solves issues with dynamically transferring objects comparable to swaying bushes and improves integration with the Lumen lighting system. Nonetheless, the complete model of this function is just not anticipated till Unreal Engine 5.7.
