The first games for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X are held back by backwards compatibility. A new tech demo created in Unreal Engine 5 shows off the true potential.
Created in Unreal Engine 5
In May 2020, Epic Games released a tech demo called Lumen in the Land of Nanite created in Unreal Engine 5, which is the latest generation of the game engine used to power many high-profile games.
Epic has now created another tech demo, The Matrix Awakens, which puts the player inside the action. After a short cinematic introduction with Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), the tech demo lets you control the action on-screen. You are eventually transported to a large city that you can explore on foot, driving or flying.
The tech demo lets you toggle world elements on and off. Photo: Epic
The purpose is to demonstrate the "future of interactive storytelling and entertainment with Unreal Engine 5", according to the announcement.
- "The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is designed to take full advantage of PS5’s technology— including the super-fast SSD drive, CPU, GPU, alongside console ray tracing," Ross Hogben, Unreal Engine Copywriter at Epic Games, wrote in a PlayStation blog post. "To do that, we’ve built a vast, 16 kilometres square open world city, comprised of seven thousand buildings made of thousands of modular pieces, each of those constructed of millions of triangles and enhanced with props, signage, debris, and more. There are 1,248 simulated intersections, 45,073 parked cars (of which 38,146 are drivable), over 260 km of roads, and 512 km of sidewalk."
Epic likes to refer to it as photorealistic but we are still not quite there yet. Another purpose of the tech demo is to demonstrate how a large and detailed city can be rendered in real time without loading screens.
The tech demo is released just a couple of weeks before the fourth The Matrix movie hits theaters and HBO Max in the US. Unreal Engine is already being used in production of movies and series. If you want to learn more, Disney has published information on how Unreal Engine was used while filming The Mandalorian.
The tech demo is a 30GB download and is available now for both new game consoles:
Download for PlayStation 5
Download for Xbox Series X/S
You can also watch the video embedded below if you do not own one of the new game consoles.
The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience
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'The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience' is a free, boundary-pushing cinematic and open-world interactive tech demo that combines the power of PlayStation®5 with UE5.
An original concept written and cinematically directed by Lana Wachowski and James McTeigue, this boundary-pushing technical demo features Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss reprising their roles as Neo and Trinity while also—in a blending of the real and unreal—playing themselves.
Many of the VFX crew from the original film came back together for the digital execution of the experience, including John Gaeta, Kim Libreri, Jerome Platteaux, George Borshukov, and Michael Gay, in collaboration with teams across both Epic Games and partners such as SideFX, Evil Eye Pictures, WetaFX (formerly Weta Digital), and many others.
The demo morphs from breathtakingly realistic cinematic to fast-paced third-person shooter experience, complete with action-packed car chase sequence, and also provides a rich, vastly detailed open world to explore, set within the universe of 'The Matrix'.
Download it now to experience the future of interactive storytelling and entertainment with UE5. |
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