Unreal Engine has undoubtedly showcased the most powerful hardware components, pushing the boundaries of video game visual fidelity.
The latest update for Unreal Engine 5 further breaks the limit for graphical quality. A new Unreal Engine 5.3 tech demo inspired by Cyberpunk 2077 looks impressive and is a glimpse of what we might expect from games releasing soon on the engine.
Why it matters: Many thought that the boundaries of graphics had already been reached in video games, but they’ve been proven wrong countless times. Unreal Engine is specifically a testimonial to that.
The Unreal Engine 5.3 tech demo, dubbed “Cyber Streets,” runs on an RTX 5090 GPU, averaging around 75 FPS on 4k native resolution with video settings pushed to the max. The demo is available to download with a video link in the description.
Additionally, the creator used nanite with distance field meshes and ambient occlusion with screen space reflection. However, lumen, baked lighting, or even RTX wasn’t used for this demo.
Despite the lack of ray-traced reflections or lighting, the demo still looks quite gorgeous, and the lack of path tracing isn’t even noticeable. While the engine is notorious for it’s performance issues, that is just mostly due to lazy development.
The creator has done a phenomenal job with the demo, especially its art style. Additionally, there are many assets and 3D objects that make it feel more like a game than a demo.
This demo also shows what a Blade Runner game could look like or whether Cyberpunk 2077 featured a third-person mode, which frankly looks quite appealing.
