Epic Games responds to the new generation of consoles with Unreal Engine 5. Fortnite will demonstrate its potential

Summer Fest is taking place, a digital event that will take place in the coming months until the end of August, with the objective of filling the absence of E3 and Gamescom, which were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim is to reveal new games, interviews with the creators, and whenever possible we offer demos to the video game fans themselves.

Yesterday the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 and 2 remaster / remake was revealed, leaving the promise for a bombshell reveal for today. And as promised, the Unreal Engine 5 engine, the new generation of technology from Epic Games from Fortnite, to power the future PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, as well as the PC and smartphones, was revealed. To demonstrate the graphic power of its new engine, a high-quality sequence was shown that Epic claims was taken from a PS5 playable demo, although it confirms that this is not a new game, but a tech demo created for that purpose.

As Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games, explained, geometric complexity stands out in this new generation, and thanks to the hardware, there are no more stops for loading levels. It was explained that the engine comes with tools for creators to be able to quickly convert and adapt a PC game or console, to mobile equipment, without losing much quality in the process, while remaining as faithful as possible to the other platforms.

And to give the creators an example of how to translate the games produced in Unreal 4 into the new engine, Epic Games promised to convert Fortnite to the technology that arrives in 2021. Interactivity and dynamism, as well as scale and speed are some of the pillars that will define the next generation of consoles. But perhaps the most interesting thing is that the Unreal 5 engine can finally break the border between cinema and video games, since it is prepared to put the assets for films and games in the same development pipeline. In other words, it will be possible to recycle the materials used in a film for a game and vice versa, thus saving a lot of money for the production stages.

It should be remembered that series like Disney's The Mandalorian already use the Unreal 4 engine to create the real-time renders of the scenarios. And if at this moment the technology still applies only to scenarios, the stadium continues to push the limit for the construction of virtual actors generated by the engine.

Still on the demonstration video, presented by art director Jerome Platteaux and graphic director Brian Karis, the use of nanotechnology to create maximum geometric detail was highlighted. The lighting technology was called Lumem, which, as they explain, reacts in real time to both the scene and the changes in light.

Whereas Fortnite today is more than a game, but a multimedia platform, capable of offering virtual concerts and other promotional events. A future update could open the door to even more ambitious ideas, as Tim Sweeney himself says "anything can be possible". Who knows how to transform the platform into a gigantic stadium for virtual live concerts on a larger scale or even a kind of drive in to watch movies?