Unreal Engine 5 - unbelievable.

[Calin Banc]

Ultimately, the performance of a game comes down to the developers. You can make Unreal run nice if you have a strong engineering team and technical direction, you write efficient code by default, know when and how to optimise, and have people that know the engine inside out. You also need some rendering wizards that know all that magic voodoo I don't concern myself with as a gameplay programmer

Keeping performance stable in big open world games full of stuff is very challenging though. Streaming content in and out smoothly and managing the lifetime of objects as they go in and out of relevance while making sure all the gameplay systems don't **** the bed is hard work.

The engine will only ever hitch and/or slow down when it's doing something it's been instructed to by a developer at the end of the day (even indirectly, like garbage collection etc.)

Impossible to say without actually profiling the game, but I'd wager in most cases, frame hitches in open world UE titles are going to be the garbage collector. This is the system that checks for any unused objects every 30 seconds, and destroys any that aren't needed any more. If there are a lot of objects, or objects with many components to clean up, you'll get a hitch. There are various ways to mitigate against this, none of which are 'tick a box' solutions, but it's an artifact of the UObject reference counting system that is at the very heart of Unreal. This is a very common software engineering pattern and not some shoddy bit of work on Epic's part.

Epic do seem to be shaping up to move away from the UObject system and lean more into ECS using the Mass framework, which isn't a silver bullet, but offers a lot of performance benefits.

Normally for shader compilation stutter it should be resolved if you have the pre compile step at the beginning and perhaps later on each time you significantly change settings, drivers, etc. Moreover, let's say they don't compile all the possible combinations, but if something misses that and it stutters during gameplay, then it should be saved, cached and not really be a problem later on. Thing is... games can stutter even if you come back to the same area, doing the same thing or just simply moving the mouse around. That should really happen to a properly coded game.

Can the garbage collector be programed to do its work over the course of multiple frames or even constantly, alongside other tasks and avoid on big stuttery dump at a time?

 

[scubes]

To be honest been playing oblivion remastered don't like the Hazey fog the mod almost eveything would have been nice but not really impressed with ue5..

 

[Dicehunter]

Someone compiled the Zorah demo and made it playable and smaller at 13GB rather than a 100GB download.

It's missing some of the tech like Nvidia Ray Reconstruction and Frame Generation but gives a nice visual.

GTB Zorah by MARvizer

An Unreal Engine 5 demo

marvizer.itch.io

 

[arknor]

To be honest been playing oblivion remastered don't like the Hazey fog the mod almost eveything would have been nice but not really impressed with ue5..

a long bridge in morrowind has lights on each side all the way across.
as you walk forward the lights "turn on" the whole way across the bridge

its like old school pop in but on light sources.

I'm not really a fan the unreal5 engine has a generic look to it in my mind.
it's like vanilla ice-cream and no one adds any flavours.


It's almost like its a game engine designed for console games, it just has that console look going on.

 

[Dicehunter]

a long bridge in morrowind has lights on each side all the way across.
as you walk forward the lights "turn on" the whole way across the bridge

its like old school pop in but on light sources.

I'm not really a fan the unreal5 engine has a generic look to it in my mind.
it's like vanilla ice-cream and no one adds any flavours.


It's almost like its a game engine designed for console games, it just has that console look going on.

You know vanilla is an actual flavour and a very complex one at that right ?

 

[arknor]

You know vanilla is an actual flavour and a very complex one at that right ?

it's also known as plain ice-cream.

I'm su re you can do wild things with the engine, but devs aren't doing it when their whole reason to use it is to saver on costs.

It should be something the smaller devs use not AAA games unless they are going to make an effort.
maybe wukong did, I didn;'t play that one

 

[Dicehunter]

it's also known as plain ice-cream.

I'm su re you can do wild things with the engine, but devs aren't doing it when their whole reason to use it is to saver on costs.

It should be something the smaller devs use not AAA games unless they are going to make an effort.
maybe wukong did, I didn;'t play that one

You take vanilla out of "plain" ice cream and it would taste extremely different, I've always thought this "vanilla is nothing" mindset was very odd

But on topic, Unreal games all look the same to me, They can be nicely detailed but to my eyes they are all starting to look Minecraft-esque

 

[scubes]

I thought the point of the new unreal engine was to eliminate pop up or pop in or clipping lol but that haze fog what's that all about crap

 

[bobert50]

I'm a bit sceptical when Unreal Engine 4 games were supposed to look like this.

A very good point!

 

[scubes]

Seen them videos long time ago pity the actual games never turned out like rhat love oblivion remaster but that fog haze just ruins it for me ..

 

[Calin Banc]

a long bridge in morrowind has lights on each side all the way across.
as you walk forward the lights "turn on" the whole way across the bridge

its like old school pop in but on light sources.

I'm not really a fan the unreal5 engine has a generic look to it in my mind.
it's like vanilla ice-cream and no one adds any flavours.


It's almost like its a game engine designed for console games, it just has that console look going on.

There's a difference between Stalker 2 and The Callisto Protocol. Just because you see a lot of drivers in a BMW that don't use the turn signal/light, it doesn't mean the car doesn't come with one.

 

[sx_turbo]

Problem when Devs use a ready made game engines is that they use them for speed, optimization is secondary to that and many features end up unused, or used incorrectly.

 

[Calin Banc]

Problem when Devs use a ready made game engines is that they use them for speed, optimization is secondary to that and many features end up unused, or used incorrectly.

Not really. Cyberpunk was a mess at launch and it used an in house game engine.

 

[sx_turbo]

Not really. Cyberpunk was a mess at launch and it used an in house game engine.

That's not what I said.

Devs use ready made engines to save themselves time and money. When they do so, they don't use all the features or don't know about the features or use them wrongly, creating a game that is not optimised to the best of the engines ability.

A dev using their own home brew game engine is a different matter especially when they bake in bugs

 

[Grim5]

Not really. Cyberpunk was a mess at launch and it used an in house game engine.

What's that got to do with anything he said

 

[Gray2233]

Not really. Cyberpunk was a mess at launch and it used an in house game engine.

Which even at the launch of Cyberpunk given the level of visuals ran better than many UE5 titles, looks better too imo even with a lot of options toned down.

There are very few well used engines that I can spot in use from a glance, I know an UE5 game the moment I see it 90% of the time. Its somehow become the RPG Maker of AA-AAA games and rarely is it utilised well, and even when it is there's inherent issues that aren't easily solved.

 

[Calin Banc]

That's not what I said.

Devs use ready made engines to save themselves time and money. When they do so, they don't use all the features or don't know about the features or use them wrongly, creating a game that is not optimised to the best of the engines ability.

A dev using their own home brew game engine is a different matter especially when they bake in bugs

What's that got to do with anything he said

CB77 was so bad it was pulled from PS Store and that was with a custom in house engine.

Guys, an engine is just a tool. Again, even using your own engine doesn't mean you'll optimize a game to run properly or get rid of the bugs. There are plenty of examples out there. Dunia (Far Cry series), already had working multi display (Eyefinity/Surround) in FC2 + other features such as more advanced physics for plants (be able to shoot off branches from a tree/bush), all lost with the next iterations. Or GTA5 being a dumb down version of GTA4 in terms of physics...

I understand that using a general engine just to throw a game out the door quickly means trouble, but it can be the same the same either way when you don't bother to optimize your game.

Which even at the launch of Cyberpunk given the level of visuals ran better than many UE5 titles, looks better too imo even with a lot of options toned down.

There are very few well used engines that I can spot in use from a glance, I know an UE5 game the moment I see it 90% of the time. Its somehow become the RPG Maker of AA-AAA games and rarely is it utilised well, and even when it is there's inherent issues that aren't easily solved.

Which ones look worse? CB77 had (and still has) a rather weak draw distance, some of the roads don't even "bend" smoothly (look at the curb how it goes straight) or water that wasn't reacting to bullets - although it was reacting to Geralt's magic in TW3. It looked better with RT on, of course, you can't beat ray traced reflections, shadows and GI with regular software (software Lumen), that UE5 uses/used by default. Ah, and I think it's still not fix the issue/bug with people hovering just above the ground.

 

[dis]

Can the garbage collector be programed to do its work over the course of multiple frames or even constantly, alongside other tasks and avoid on big stuttery dump at a time?

Yes it can, fairly easily. doesn't help if you free off a lot of resources in one frame though (level streaming etc)

UE is not terribly nice for optimisation. Mainly at the moment it's a render issue. Game thread can be kept under control, but fundamental issues in there if you scale things up.
General rule, if you're making a Fortnite clone you'll be all good. Do something a bit different and you'll have issues/custom work needed.

Game dev, 20 years, lot of that spent on optimisation. Wouldn't use UE if I had a choice

 

[Calin Banc]

Yes it can, fairly easily. doesn't help if you free off a lot of resources in one frame though (level streaming etc)

UE is not terribly nice for optimisation. Mainly at the moment it's a render issue. Game thread can be kept under control, but fundamental issues in there if you scale things up.
General rule, if you're making a Fortnite clone you'll be all good. Do something a bit different and you'll have issues/custom work needed.

Game dev, 20 years, lot of that spent on optimisation. Wouldn't use UE if I had a choice

What exactly is the problem with the render? I don't think I've heard about it yet.

 

[humbug]

FSR 3.1 test in UE5.

I used the FSR 3 UI from Unreal Bench, credits to them, their website is dead now so IDK if its still available somewhere, its not difficult to integrate in to your project, just hook the buttons into the backend using the UI builder.
Failing that building your own basic UI is pretty easy.

Integrating FSR 3.1 unto UE you will need Visual Studio to do it properly, it is a bit more difficult but i'm a novice hobbyist with little programming knowledge so if i can do it then pretty much anyone can. Which makes me wonder why it isn't just ubiquitous. It really should be.

Once you have FSR 3.1 working from then on upgrading to FSR 4 should be a formality, or at least it would be if not for the fact that FSR 4 is not yet available on GPUOpen.
Having said that i don't actually have an RDNA 4 GPU yet, so i'm either waiting on AMD, for two things, if FSR 4 on RDNA 3 rumours are to be believed, or i'll have to wait until i get one.

So FSR 3.1 is actually the same as FSR 2, its only the back end that's changed making it compatible with user upgradability, well frame gen is much updated but visually its FSR 2, garbage.

Assets used are from the Electronic Dreams Demo, Foliage are mostly from the Nordic Coastal Collection, the landscape is my own 3D Hight map, Primary Landscape materials are also my own creation.
It is Running Path Traced Ray Tracing. My GPU hates me for torturing it.

Its part of the FedelityFX SDK v1.1.3 Package. here https://gpuopen.com/fidelityfx-super-resolution-3/

I'm not doing any more with EU at this time, Nanite is good tech, its a good idea but once you get deep enough in to the project it feels like a sticking plaster over some fundamental issues with the engine, the engine is incredibly resource heavy before you do much at all leaving you no real budget to work with, this is due to a bunch of things already talked to death and rightfully so.
You do need a lot of GPU horsepower to get anything to work reasonably in this engine and that becomes a problem for development with this engine in of its self, which is concerning given the ubiquitous nature to this engine games are increasingly becoming.

The only winners here are Nvidia and AMD, GPU's are becoming so powerful that them running near photorealistic graphics is an easy task and if graphics are getting to a stage where they are hitting visual limits then there is no need for ever increasing TeraFlops.