An innovative tech demo powered by Unreal Engine 5.5.3 has been released, providing players with a captivating walkthrough of a futuristic cyberpunk city. This project, developed by the talented artist Sciontidesign, draws inspiration from the iconic Samaritan UE3 demo, the visually rich Blade Runner franchise, and the immersive aesthetic of Cyberpunk 2077. The demo was showcased on high-end hardware, utilizing an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU, an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM running at 6000MHz.
This technical demonstration is unique in its reliance solely on dynamic lighting, effectively showcasing the capabilities of Unreal Engine 5's Nanite technology with Distance Field Meshes and Ambient Occlusion, combined with Screen Space Reflections. Notably, the demo does not use advanced features like Lumen, Path Tracing, RTX, DLSS, or baked lighting, which underscores what UE5 can achieve even without its most sophisticated tools.
While the rain effect in the demo appears somewhat artificial, the rendering of wet surfaces is impressively detailed, adding significant depth to the urban environment. However, the experience is marred by frequent invisible walls, which detract from the overall immersion. Although Unreal Engine 5 tech demos consistently deliver visually stunning experiences, games built on the engine often face performance challenges when implemented in real-world scenarios.
