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 in addition letting Unreal Engine 5.6 off the leash.
Unreal Fest 2025 kicked off right now 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
In contrast to earlier bulletins with pre-rendered trailers, CD Projekt Pink and Epic Video games introduced scenes from the present state of growth of the sport.
Nonetheless, it ought to be famous that the pictures proven are a technical presentation within the context of Unreal Engine 5.6 and never precise gameplay, as CD Projekt Pink explains within the accompanying announcement.
The tech demo took gamers to the beforehand unknown area of Kovir, the place protagonist Ciri travels by way of snow-covered mountain landscapes and dense forests along with her horse Kelpie.
Unreal Engine 5.6: Give attention to 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 reaching constant 60 FPS efficiency on present console {hardware}.
Lumen optimizations
One of the essential enhancements issues the lumen system for world illumination:
In response to Epic Video games, the hardware-based ray tracing implementation has been essentially redesigned to remove CPU bottlenecks.
The optimizations are supposed to deliver the {hardware} ray tracing variant of Lumen as much as the efficiency stage of the software-based answer, releasing up corresponding CPU sources for different programs.
“Quick Geometry Streaming Plugin”
One other key characteristic of Unreal Engine 5.6 is the (nonetheless experimental) “Quick Geometry Streaming Plugin.”
In response to the builders, this technique permits massive quantities of static geometry to be loaded sooner and with extra constant body charges at runtime.
For open-world video games, Epic Video games guarantees smoother transitions between totally different areas with out annoying loading occasions or body price drops.
Renderer parallelization and extra
The Render {Hardware} Interface (RHI) has been extensively reworked to raised make the most of the multithreading capabilities of recent {hardware}. Beforehand, sure rendering operations had been restricted to the render thread, although present graphics APIs similar to DirectX 12, Vulkan, and Metallic help 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 contemporary updates. The system is now instantly built-in into the Unreal Editor and provides 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, then again, allows 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 doable by “Nanite Foliage,” a newly added extension to the Nanite virtualization system. The system is designed to render extraordinarily detailed bushes and vegetation in massive numbers with none lack of efficiency.
Nanite Foliage additionally solves issues with dynamically shifting objects similar to swaying bushes and improves integration with the Lumen lighting system. Nonetheless, the total model of this characteristic is just not anticipated till Unreal Engine 5.7.
