Fortnite's Unreal Engine 5 Upgrade Reviewed - Lumen/Nanite at 60FPS - PS5 vs Xbox Series X/S + PC!

Fortnite's full Unreal Engine 5 upgrade has arrived, delivering cutting-edge next-gen rendering features like Lumen global illumination and Nanite geometry at 60fps on PS5, Xbox Series X and even Series S! How big of an upgrade is it? How do the consoles compare? And what further features does PC bring to the party? John Linneman and Alex Battaglia have the answers!
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[@SnipeyFox]

Gotta hand it to Epic, Unreal Engine 5 is such a step up. Was a real visual treat jumping in when the new chapter dropped

[@rayyanabdulwajid7681]

Unreal 5 looks different, but doesn't look any better

[@arnabsaha8761]

Gotta hand it to Epic*

[@SnipeyFox]

@@rayyanabdulwajid7681 I'm gonna have to personally disagree with you there. It looks great lol

[@arnabsaha8761]

@@rayyanabdulwajid7681 The fact they made a game that looked like a cartoon to looking like this should say it all.

[@SnipeyFox]

@@arnabsaha8761 thank you :)

[@recordatron]

I love how ray traced features can make otherwise quite basic looking games look absolutely jaw dropping. It's pretty wild how much lighting and reflections can enhance even fairly basic looking textures and environments.

[@modelotime3608]

you should check out minecraft rtx showcase

[@kurtisrinker1202]

Yep I was going to say Minecraft RTX is a perfect example of just how much a difference raytracing can make. It almost feels like a completely different game.

[@AstroAvenger]

@@modelotime3608 minecraft 🤡

[@Daigon95]

@@kurtisrinker1202 Isnt MC using Path-tracing though, which is more expensive than RT?

[@WDeranged]

I was never impressed with the focus on reflections in the early days. RT lighting really does bring huge improvements.

[@marvel626]

This is absolutely insane. Can't wait for what games will look like in 5 years once this has been perfected.

[@multidoor6928]

It's already been 4 years since the beginning of RTX

[@BltchErica]

@@multidoor6928 But now most gamers can actually afford RTXs, it makes sense that ray tracing is now becoming a more mainstream thing in games now that the market for games featuring ray tracing is there.

[@justaweeb14688]

@@BltchErica the 20 series RTX was pretty affordable though

[@xwild3901]

We will be the games.

[@Jonifico]

@@multidoor6928 The pandemic slowed progress by about 3 years, so there's that

[@lyconxero457]

I've been extremely impressed with UE5 ever since it was first announced and showcased but actually seeing Epic showcase a REAL GAME using UE5 with all the new features running at 60FPS is just amazing.

[@pastortroy4life]

Yeah, it made shitty ass fortnite look good. That's impressive.

[@Dev_407]

@@pastortroy4life 🤡

[@Exc4Iibur]

@@pastortroy4life you aren’t wrong but bro you didn’t need to be an ass about it bruh just say the game looks better and move on

[@teekanne15]

@@Exc4Iibur don’t indulge in negative people. They thrive on a attention.

[@Bartholo-meow]

@@teekanne15 shh, bro is friggin introvert who can't even start a conversation with a total stranger😌

[@sleeplessindefatigable6385]

The most impressive thing to me here is the trees. They look so much better it's worth the upgrade just for that. Foliage has always been a bugbear for me, and it looks like LumeNite has finally given us trees that can be modelled down to the bark texture and the thickness of the leaves.

[@lynackhilou4865]

Yeah one of the most immersion breaking things was looking in the distance and having foliage or trees not rendered , rendered as 2d objects or have them but without any shadows , and UE5 looks like it will solve this issue once and for all

[@RDR911]

@@lynackhilou4865 I'm just looking forward to Nanite Trees in something like the new UE5 STALKER that's coming out next year. Imagine the density of distant forests with this...

[@careyunknown3449]

Worth the free upgrade..lol

[@magregory1985]

When players hide in bushes it was always hard to see other players now though it so much easier x

[@vegaadrian49]

You must not have a 4k tv or console.

[@musguelha14]

It really does look beautiful, it reminds me of when Minecraft got its RT version and a simple cube world suddenly looked stunning.

[@infernaldaedra]

I remember when Microsoft said RTX was coming to Minecraft on the Xbox one X 😂😂

[@infernaldaedra]

Now we know wh that didn't happen though lmao

[@captainwafer7965]

@@infernaldaedra I am still waiting for a PS5/Series X|S version of Minecraft. Only then will it fully use RTX functionality.

[@silverbison]

@@infernaldaedra Why was that?

[@sasquatchhillbilly]

​@@silverbisonMaybe waiting for UE5?

[@JerryFlowersIII]

I didn't realize how transformative it would be to have basically no LOD transitions with Nanite. Everything just looks so full and with the shadows going so far out it looks really good.

[@a1racer441]

I knew the 5.1 update was impressive looking, but that is insane the amount of detail and the upgrades it brought. At some point in the next 2-3 years we will start seeing true next gen games based on these features. I’m excited to see what the other engine makers bring and what else unreal can do.

[@Nazylexx]

I wait for the era where no more games release on last/new gen. Let's give a rest a good ol' ps4. I wanna more games like Returnal or Demon's Souls (PS5)

[@christopherwalkinalloverya5824]

@@Nazylexx You can blame Microsoft for holding back next gen with the weak ass Series S...

[@erictlg632]

@@christopherwalkinalloverya5824thats a budget console idk why your complaining just buy an X

[@christopherwalkinalloverya5824]

@@erictlg632 I already have a Series X. That doesn't change the fact that Series S holds back the scope of game development.

[@expiredhamburger6531]

@@christopherwalkinalloverya5824 it's not holding anything and there is 0 logic behind this claim

[@Ozziw162]

I love that Unreal 1 reference at 10:50, with the camera panning around the castle and the original music playing in the background

[@MimicDaravon]

I was so distracted by that I didn't catch a word that was said.

[@memento81]

I stopped the video at the 4:00 minute mark and went to the comments to see if anyone else recognized the background music of the video as the menu music from Unreal 1. I see the editing is working up to something now, haha.

[@Phil_529]

2:08 sounds like an Unreal Tournament theme to me as well. Good stuff.

[@JoseRodriguez-go5do]

I was about to comment the same

[@xIPIUIRIEo]

Came here to say the same. Such a perfect Easter egg hit me right in the member berries. Muah *chef's kiss*

[@joewickham2825]

Nanite+Lumen is such a game changer for video games graphics. That combined with the more advance reconstruction techniques ( temporal to DLSS ) we have a bright pathed traced future ahead of us for video game graphics.

[@th3orist]

unfortunatelly no DLSS to use with these new additions in Fortnie, yet

[@jamezxh]

@@th3orist Looks like NVIDA cards are exposed for the moment.

[@th3orist]

@@jamezxh only if you want it to see it this way

[@thecarl1013]

​@@jamezxh DLSS is temporary disabled due to tests/compatibility with UE5.1 version.

[@maaax1173]

@@th3orist Doesn‘t really matter, TSR works on all hardware and honestly looks very close to DLSS to the point you can‘t tell

[@Goldieleaf]

Just thought I’d point this out here in case anyone is confused 17:17 the series X and S also have water ripples like the PS5 ver but since the PS5 gameplay is actually playing while the other two are spectating it’s disabled.

[@James-cr8mt]

these new lighting techniques are absolutely gorgeous. scenes look so much more natural (especially darker areas like under shelters and inside buildings.

[@Bankenrepublik]

I don't even like Fortnite but when I saw the announcement I instantly downloaded it to explore UE5.1 - can't wait for other titles utilizing lumen & nanite.

[@okcoolmax]

Same haha

[@xlr555usa]

Fortnight has gotten old but I like how they show off Unreal 5. 2023 should have some great releases for U5.

[@Phil_529]

Same. Never bothered to play more than a few minutes but this update has gotten me to sink a few hours in already. Can't wait for DLSS to return. The game looks amazing now.

[@TheCrewExpendable]

@@okcoolmax same same same

[@clairifedverified2513]

Ive never found fortnite fun, in fact battle royale is genuinely antithetical to what i enjoy in games, so seeing this makes me wish i could enjoy it, because god its pretty.

[@mitchboland9591]

Really hoping this becomes more widely-used tech. Lighting like this is game changing

[@zedsdeadbaby]

Oh for sure. UE5 will likely be the most common engine just like UE4 was before

[@ifstatementifstatement2704]

Every Unreal engine game on pc has constant stuttering. I want this engine locked away and forgotten. It’s a piece of crap. Digital foundry kept pointing out the stuttering issue for a year. Callisto protocol uses it and all the stuttering on pc has broken Alex at digital foundry

[@JadenFolster]

@@ifstatementifstatement2704oh it sure does look like a crappy engine lol

[@sellingacoerwa8318]

@@ifstatementifstatement2704 lol... "it's broken Alex...he's BROKEN! do you hear me! LEAVE HIM ALONG! (insert leave Britney alone gif)

[@megamanx1291]

hopefully without fuckin shader compile stuttering this time

[@Tekaisuwu]

Exactly the video I wanted to pop up in my recommended! Since Fortnite chapter 4 released, every other day I would search “Fortnite Lumen and Nanite showcase” but could never find an actual deep dive/analysis. Thank you for the great content!

[@devinprizmic]

If you were ever to revisit this, a pretty impressive looking new fire effect utilizing the new lighting has also been added if you use something flammable or explosive to ignite flammable objects.

[@HShango]

I've got to be honest, I saw the trailer and indeed see the improvements across the board, well done to Epic for delivering on that.

[@Glotttis]

I mean, game had phone-like graphics before with decade old rendering technologies. You'd have to be blind not to notice difference when they finally updated graphics to 2022 rendering standards.

[@cooperodom7747]

@@Glotttis well I think the leap is as noticeable as it is because it did have a decade old rendering technique behind it but I think you may have undersold these new techniques. Getting 60 on these consoles with all of these raytracing features is outstanding.

[@ifstatementifstatement2704]

That engine sucks. Every game that uses it has constant stuttering on pc.

[@cooperodom7747]

@@ifstatementifstatement2704 if this were true there’d have to be a lot more ue5 games. Ue4 is the engine with shader stutter issues and is more often a fault of lack of developer building stronger framework than the fault of the engine itself.

[@ItsIcedDonut]

@@Glotttis it had ray tracing already?

[@captainwafer7965]

I can see why Unreal Engine 5 took 8 years to create. Epic Games wanted this to be the big graphics leap we have been waiting for. Thanks to everyone at Epic for all of your hard work. Edit: Nearly 300 Likes, Thank you YT Community.

[@nexxusty]

Lol. Thanking Epic for an Unreal Engine. You're part of the problem.

[@captainwafer7965]

@@nexxusty The matrix demo looked like it was filmed and not completely coded. Was that game a problem? But ok, your comment was funny.

[@AlanPayne.]

@@nexxusty what's your problem with the Engine?

[@mikem2253]

Probably had to do with hardware constraints too. Can’t be too forward thinking if the hardware can’t keep up at release.

[@umbasa01]

I like it but some games absolutely pour on the reflections and it's like omg muh graphics but its artistically meh

[@UnrealSensei]

Thanks! I've been waiting for this since the update

[@DEMediaDrive]

Getting better and better with each iteration. Thanks for the overview!

[@riaz8783]

Yes the Series S has cutbacks, but considering you could get one for less than 200 bucks in Black Friday, this is a damn good showing.

[@Alexp37]

Yep.

[@shadewoodchair8111]

This is what I think of when I hear "Next Gen". I absolutely CANNOT wait until Lumen and Nanite in UE5 are commonplace in new titles. Truly ground breaking stuff to a degree that I honestly don't think has happened since before my time gaming.

[@mat4246]

It may be the first big thing since CDs and 3D graphics

[@kidShibuya]

Yeah I cant wait till I cannot see out of windows or tunnel exits either.

[@igorthelight]

@@kidShibuya That's not Lumen - that's eye adaptation. That could be disabled in "good" games ;-)

[@jasonthedesigner]

Something I noticed missing is reflections from water upwards. For instance in the underpass scene, light should be dancing across the underside of the bridge as it is reflected off the water. Amazing, yet still a ways to go for sure. Huge improvement however over the 'flat' appearance without it enabled. Great video btw. Love all the side by side comparisons.

[@not_hanky_ou]

Man your choice in music is perfect, such a nostalgia trip. And when the Unreal title screen came on at 10:55, LOL. Great choice, obvious association. Great video too, but I was mostly geeking out over the old music and think to myself that maybe I should replay the game that started it all. Unreal.

[@blendernoob64]

10:50 AWESOME THROWBACK JOHN! Remember guys, Epic’s history is so storied and fascinating. They have made an impact on every generation of gamer, from Epic Pinball, to Unreal to Gears to Infinity Blade to Fortnite

[@Gaboou]

Let's not forget Jazz Jackrabbit! 😃🤌

[@ghost085]

I didn't notice he manually did the Unreal flyby lol. Only noticed the music.

[@Fina1Ragnarok]

The disabled vs enabled comparisons remind me of how games used to look on Low vs Maxed as opposed to today where the low settings in many games look only slightly lower and also don't change performance tremendously.

[@0011101001101]

A+ inclusion of Unreal 1 and Uru: Ages Beyond Myst soundtracks, both milestones in real time rendering of high detail. You know your history! The recreation of Unreal's castle flight is awesome. If only that camera could roll.

[@Danunga94]

I was looking for a comment mentioning Unreal, it's always a pleasure

[@MoritzWeller]

The ammount of effort you put in all those side by side comparisons is remarkable. Thanks for this detailed breakdown! I gotta say I am impressed by Epic that they really put their money where their mouth is and even go so far pushing Nanite and Lumen into a liveservice game, this is a whole different ballpark than just showing off techdemos.

[@iikatinggangsengii2471]

well if i keep dont get any the acc basically turned to be real example of how far human can do bcs of greed

[@iikatinggangsengii2471]

its not abt how well im living or whether i need or not, its basically not how business done, and severely reduce trust, which is important in joint projects

[@notjustsad]

started to play few months ago because I was curious, thought I would hate it. Well...I'm hooked ever since to be honest. And this update is absolutely incredible. Runs better, looks way better, plays better. This is really an incredible showcase, thanks for covering it.

[@ChrisBeiting]

Right? I use to crap on it too, then zero build came out and I love it. I get to now play with my kid and it's been a blast.

[@dannymorrow6024]

It doesn't run better though, its slightly worse atm with the introduction of the new tech tbh. I hope it's addressed

[@cooperodom7747]

@@dannymorrow6024 it seems like optimization with all these features was a priority. I’m sure it will be ironed out

[@100Underscores]

I'm exactly the same. My son got in to it and I started playing it to play with him. Now me and 3 of the guys I went to school with play it every night, haha.

[@notjustsad]

@@dannymorrow6024 I can just speak for me here of course, heard some people experiencing problems - I'm playing on Geforce Now with the 3080 thing and it runs better than before (for me), hope they'll sort it out for others of course!

[@Zastrutzki]

And Lumen also cleans up graffiti! Nifty. Also... is that under and over the bridge of the castle sequence a nod to the Unreal attract mode from yesteryear? That's fantastic! It even has the music!

[@Nevakonaza.]

Fantastic content, I love the switching screenshots between the Series S and X around 18:16,The Series S holding up quite well :) But wow Lumen/Nanite and UE 5 has made Fortnight beautiful.

A huge grin comes onto may face every time you include classic Unreal Tournament music in your Epic tech reviews :)

[@x0Fang0x]

Digital Foundry didn't mention this but I've noticed Fortnite uses "hero lighting" on PC and Xbox but not on Ps5. If you don't know what hero lighting is, it's a technique where a character is lit by another light source that is (usually) not part of a scene. Which looks good outside under the sun but when you're in a dark place it looks goofy and bad. here are some examples 14:31,18:39, 24:44 25:36, 25:52, 29:46

[@woodrowaugustusrogers8778]

Yeah bro, I saw it and it’s weird as hell. Honestly makes the game look so bad.

[@NineS5]

could it be that XBOX and PC was spectating PS5 so the lighting was acting that way? It indeed looks terrible.

[@marcgtsr]

great catch

[@alumlovescake]

I am stupid what looks bad? The use of hero lighting or the lack of hero lighting?

[@TheCrewExpendable]

@@alumlovescake The use of the hero lighting. Particularly in dark scenes it looks weird to have this really bright rim lighting. Horizon Forbidden West does the same thing. At least Fortnite is cartoony and silly, so it gives the characters a kind of action figure toy appearance that fits the art style, even if the lighting doesn’t always make sense. Horizon is generally at lot more serious, so it’s weird for Alloy to be lit like she is modeling a costume for a movie advertisement photo shoot instead of running around a post apocalyptic jungle.

[@CrisRios]

Great video! Only DF can go deeper into this type of analysis. Thanks.

[@h4x0y]

Great tech, great video, and I applaud the choice to add music from Unreal Tournament and Uru Ages Beyond Myst.

[@DazzlingDivineCGI]

Looks really awesome. Thanks for the analysis. :) I also upgraded all my games to nanite and lumen and they look incredible too.

[@ForExampleJon]

Went from 100 fps max settings to 60 mid-high but the extra eye candy is worth it.

[@JohnMigle]

I’m glad you brought up the shader compilation stutter because for me personally on PC regardless of graphical settings the game has not been a smooth experience like before. Yes stutters happened every major update, but it only lasted a few rounds. After 3 days of the new chapter I’m still getting stutters in matches

[@mostunique5941]

It’s finally fixed since yesterday, didn’t have a single stutter

[@JohnMigle]

@@mostunique5941 I think you’re correct, it’s been way improved these past couple days. Glad it’s stabled out

[@ThatguyFalcone]

The Battaglia zone transition made me spit out my drink laughing hahaha. Great job John and Alex! Fortnite looks gorgeous with Lumen and Nanite. I will never play it, but great to see Epic making leaps forward with their engine to benefit the industry as a whole. Or that's the hope I guess.

[@ecp1453]

Looks amazing, plays really great too. With essentially a locked 60, makes you wonder how much overhead there is and how an unlocked, VRR mode would fare

[@TheAbvsyork]

Wow and tsr is really impressive. If it ever dipped to 840p or however low you said in crazy fighting I would have not noticed the resolution was that low

[@TVPIVVA]

Looks so damn good loved the breakdown with John & Alex!

[@shmoneybruh22]

epic games using the money they make from fortnite item shop purchases to upgrade the game’s engine is *chef’s kiss*

[@seankew8021]

You guys are amazing, your content makes gaming better for everyone. Keep up the great work!

[@CortezProductions]

5:13 Another thing here is the water reflection, this version of UE5 now has Lumen Reflections on the "Single Layer Water" shader model. Same with translucent materials (Glass), but I'm not sure if fortnite is also using the new Lumen Translucent Reflections.

[@klaimtrev3292]

Great video as always! I just want to point out a small error at 8:10 . The initial version of Unreal Engine 5 did support alpha masked textures but it wasn't until UE 5.1 that nanite could finally work with alpha masked textures (nanite foliage)

[@tufflucal4037]

+Klaimtrev Anyone else sees a small visual improvement for the PS5 over the Series X?!

[@duncanself5111]

17:11 water physics are better on PS5

[@mariodobairro1559]

@@tufflucal4037 17:10 PS5 has waves, 18:50 PS5 does not have a random light around the character.

[@tufflucal4037]

@@mariodobairro1559 Yuuss

[@tufflucal4037]

@@mariodobairro1559 Yaaass

[@jwags_]

Really like how a dark room flashes when shots are going off

[@Glowbox3D]

Great video. Thank you. I've been working in UE5 for a bit now, and I'm really enjoying it, and really love the recent updates. I'm actually installing Fortnite right now (after so long) to try out the new engine. Cheers!

[@kuplayford1203]

The improvements look MINDBLOWING! What I can't wrap my head around is why can't the all the shader compilation be done in the initial launch of the game! I mean I don't think any gamer would ind waiting 10-15 mins for all the shaders to be compiled FOREVER and then be able to enjoy a smooth experience...

[@MikhailT]

As Epic mentioned, the assets are sometime streamed in from elsewhere. Let's say in the MP game, the other players are playing with a custom skin or character, you wouldn't be able to compile it before the game, it has to be done on the fly. Same thing if the game is using dynamic assets that changes in real time. However, I do agree that all games should at least start compiling almost all of the assets used and let the user know of the current progress, so they don't start the game while it is still compiling. Heck, how about compiling them during the download if at all possible, like work with app stores to run a binary to start compiling the assets. Based on the video here, Epic is still working on PSO. Hopefully, they can get the rest of them done in time for 5.2 update since a lot of new games are going to be using UE5 and they may not update to 5.2 if they're doing something custom. FYI: The compiled shader cache is not forever though, they have to be recompiled every time the GPU drivers or game assets changed (like a game update).

[@Pisscan]

How does an Epic game still have stutters? They made the engine… 💀

[@kuplayford1203]

@@MikhailT Awesome reply Mike! Care to share a little bit more of your knowledge and explain us why most other game engines don't have this problem? Thanks!

[@SimonBuchanNz]

​@@kuplayford1203 other game engines absolutely *can*, but unreal engine makes it super easy for artists to create new materials, and thus new shaders to compile, for every little thing by wiring operations together, and then it doesn't have a good way to figure out what materials will be used in a game at build time automatically. This wasn't a problem (or at least as much) with dx11 and earlier, when all this was built, but for whatever reason the modern dx12 and a vulkan apis that let you build things like lumen and nanite fall over when you throw lots of different shaders at them. So essentially, as I understand it, Unreal is a victim of being "too good" in the sense of making it easy to make pretty games, and got caught out by the APIs changing out from under them! There's still a couple of things that don't make sense to me yet: why is it so hard to get a list of all the shaders (they're somewhat dynamic, yes, but you can make shaders dynamic at a performance cost, and lower FPS until you optimize is better than stutter until you optimize), and why is it worse for dx12 drivers than before: if anything dx12 has more warning that a new shader is going to be used as you have to create a description (the PSO) ahead of actually using it.

[@jose131991]

@@SimonBuchanNz well the thing is also, around the time dx11 was at its peak, shaders weren’t as numerous or as big in file size in your average game at the time as they are in games now. Couple that with the dx12 change which makes it more manual configuration ( we know how that goes with lazy devs) then you got perfect recipe for disaster.

[@SeniorCharry]

I thought something looked different with the new Fortnite update. I play on the 120fps mode on the Series X so I never knew the game got a serious upgrade like what was shown in this video. I'm going to play some matches at 60fps to see how the game looks. Thanks for the info.

[@asatamer]

Another dope video, many thanks Digital Foundry team! Much love ✌

[@Case_]

That 10:50 part brought a smile to my face :) It's incredible how far we've come since then.

[@itstommylove]

Love the fly through homage to the original Unreal complete with the original theme. Very appropriate for celebrating this Unreal Engine upgrade. Keep killing it guys

[@ctrlectrld]

Fantastic video and fantastic analysis. But even more fantastic is the amazing work the guys at Epic Games have done with UE5. In this moment in time, this is the right and sensible approach when it comes to lighting and "ray tracing". I have been reading the Lumen pdf from Siggraph 2022 and it's just brilliant, the way they address all the issues while always trying to keep the balance between visual fidelity, performance and scalability. When I have read the opener I actually got goosebumps, because it's something that even an idiot like me has been saying for quite a while now: "Hardware Ray Tracing is great and it is the future, but we need options to scale down. In the PC market there are still plenty of video cards that don’t support hardware ray tracing, and console Hardware Ray Tracing is not that fast. We also want to handle scenes that have heavily overlapping meshes, which are slow with Hardware Ray Tracing’s two level acceleration structure. So we’re going to develop a Software Ray Tracing path that addresses these limitations." Brilliant. Their hybrid approach with SRT, SDF, MDF and ray-marching is just brilliant. Actually when I saw the pic showing SRT-SDF-MDF, my bonobo brain went like: "woah that's me in 2018 killing my GPU while using multiple instances of MXAO with multiple radii just to get decent AO and fake GI" Epic Games get a lot of flak, but what they have been doing for the video games industry as a whole, since their inception, is absolutely remarkable.

[@apictureoffunction]

Please make "the Battaglia zone" transition from this video a regular thing, I got a good chuckle out of that 60s-Batman-esque rotating picture effect lol

[@LeBurkaTron]

You guys were actually machines!. Crazy hours crunched to get it done. And it's highly professional.. PS Richard, get the. Cheque book out. Dudes are working hard and passionate 🤜🔥

[@pian-0g445]

As someone who hasn’t played the game in years, I’m having the same experience as when an old game j played when younger gets remastered. It looks like how I remembered it

[@cody3335]

Insanely transformative with the lighting changes

[@McKay1901]

nice Uru: Ages Beyond Myst background music choices, unreal castle too ofc

[@webx135]

This REALLY makes me wish they continued the Unreal Tournament franchise. If we had UT2004's maps in this fidelity it would be astounding.

[@NoName-dc5df]

Or better yet Unreal 3.

[@Roobar_Plays]

Facing worlds is actually within Fortnite recreated by fans, but I haven't checked it how it looks with the latest changes that were introduced with ue5.1. Perhaps other maps are also in.

[@ShadyPaperclips]

damn you guys really killed it with this analysis 🔥🔥, lots of information to digest

[@osirismaximus2787]

The future of gaming is looking better and better. Very impressive stuff and very promising for this generation of consoles.

[@lyfe8349]

I wouldn’t say so. Most games release buggy, bad, or broken. Sometimes all of the above. URE5 won’t fix greedy publishers rushing devs to release generic copy paste games.

[@pauhzy6347]

@@lyfe8349 a engine that works can go a long way

[@WhirlwindHeatAndFlash]

graphics arent everything between mtx, simplistic repetetive gameplay and timegating its looking freaking grim from where im watching

[@eyetipe8362]

@@WhirlwindHeatAndFlash exactly the graphics are good but boy the games getting released are look so boring and with 0 personality

[@devBadgerJ]

Agreed. Games can be pretty and realistic or pretty and stylized. Gameplay is getting better across the board. Keeps getting better

[@bbatbileg]

Fascinating stuff. In some situations, the lighting is more important than the texture etc and you can clearly see it in some of the comparisons.

[@spyro440]

Starts to really look great, glad they nailed the performance! :) I hope they can iron out those shader compiling / PSO gathering stutter and find a way to hide/smooth out the noise artefarkts.

[@Seanbyford]

Thanks to the team for such great content…nobody does reviews like this.. and certainly not to this level of technical insight😊

[@tzuyd]

Nanite, the PS5 SSD and PSVR2s eye tracking seems like a recipe for unbelievable gorgeousness.

[@hotpocketsalesman1223]

Play Red Matter 2. Absolutely bonkers

[@JamesHoggard]

Great video guys. If you continue to play beyond this video, you should try getting used to sliding down any sort of downward slope. Might not make you any better but it's really fun.

[@T--800]

10:53 nice Unreal castle flyby. You're even replicating the camera movement.

[@awsomeboy360]

I wonder what other engines will do for their current gen update. The Decima Engine is looking might insane, what will Naughty Dog do? Sooo much in this, really exciting times. We haven't gotten this much of a graphic leap since ps2 to ps3.

[@MrWhis-fe5hs]

I don't really see this as a graphical leap though it's not really that impressive but yes I remember getting a PS1 and plane Tekken 3 and a couple months later getting second tag that was amazing and even going from final fantasy 10 to final fantasy 13 graphically not gameplay-wise lol was also amazing

[@SubjektDelta]

@@MrWhis-fe5hs you will see this graphical leap once a realistic game will ship. Fortnite is of course stylized but still the lighting is IMPRESSIVE!!!!!!

[@potatofuryy]

@@MrWhis-fe5hs It is extremely impressive and is definitely a generational leap.

[@HugoStiglitz88]

I wanna see what naughty dog does with ray tracing because they already had the best lighting on last gen by far even with uncharted 4. Uncharted 4 still looks stunning without ray tracing, imagine when ND start using it for global illumination

[@awsomeboy360]

@@HugoStiglitz88 Yeah, it's going to get crazy.

[@frezer748]

Fantastic breakdown and well edited video :D Unreal Engine 5 really has impressive tech!

[@jahdielcotto748]

I’m glad i’m not the only one with the same problem on pc. The fact that there is so little talk about this out there is disappointing. Thanks for the awesome content DF

[@gastheweebs]

you are a bad person

[@DarkReturns1]

Really hope you do a deep dive on PC performance Alex! Curious to how all the different RT cards perform with this.

[@-1nterruption-960]

2:10 Hearing the music from the original Unreal brings back so many memories 🥰🥰 Thank you for putting this in the video DF 😃😃 Edit: And that castle flyby at 10:50 is also much appreciated homage to Unreal 1 ☺️☺️

[@warmth_97]

Was going to say the same! Love it

[@GoldSabre]

Editor really pulled their weight on that castle throwback to Unreal for sure

[@-1nterruption-960]

@@warmth_97 so many epic memories playing Unreal 1 in coop with friends I made on there as a kid 😃😃

[@-1nterruption-960]

@@warmth_97 they need to make Unreal 3 already. So many years have gone by since the days of the original 😃😃

[@-1nterruption-960]

@@GoldSabre heck yes 🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼

[@UserInterface00]

Personally, I’m not a Fortnite player, but downloading just to run around the map and look at the nice graphical upgrade.

[@MrDophilus]

How do you sync your videos so perfectly? Impressive!

[@christianek_h]

Gotta love the Unreal tournament music in the background!! 🔥

[@nak_attak]

The new engine also brought things like more detailed animations and physics with characters, and realistic particles when you destroy items. The character animations are a bit uncanny, as they are so much more realistic than previous animations. (These animations can only be seen in emotes and the lobby)

[@ChrisPkmn]

I do want to see the resource tax nanite takes. VRAM usage spiked with the 3060 & 6700xt getting 12gb last generation, and I always thought that would be because of Direct Storage and Mesh Shaders. I'm glad they took the time to get foliage implemented rather than have the trees flip between billboard lod's. I've played fortnite a total of 3 times in 2019 but this tech demo makes me want to experience it with fresh hardware

[@superboss7403]

Really nice that digital foundry covers every content it doesn't matter if it's a AAA game or battle royal

[@ABentPaperclip]

would love to see an update to this with all the stuff added since 5.1, ie) terrains now support nanite, animated foliage, etc

[@thiccfil-a]

I’m so happy fortnite is getting more positive attention now, been playing for 5 years and have always enjoyed the game. I’m glad to se epic improving the game so people see how awesome this game is.

[@TheLEGITstuff]

been waiting for this one! This update is AMAZING!! Props to everyone that worked on this at epic. These graphics are a MILESTONE in all of gaming. Amazing how well the new hardware runs it as well. Gotta hand it to fortnite, even though the game gets hated on, it does most thing better than every other game. Never thought I would feel the need to upgrade my card, but man this update sure does give a lot of reason to.

[@Divinicus1er]

Waouh, if you pause at 1:51, the changes make such a difference to the perseption of depth, it's incredible.

[@alextrophylife]

26:46 like those horror documentaries when says WHAT DID YOU FIND ( wavy slowly dying background music 🎵) 😂

[@Zhunter5000]

I'm glad DF is finally going over the PC shader cache issues with Fortnite. Hopefully that will get word to epic.

[@jessterman21]

Lumen is amazing, and seems to be the next step up from SVOGI, but I'm much more impressed with Nanite. It feels like a quantum leap up from tessellation. I suppose the only thing I've seen like it was the one tree in Crysis 3 that had pixel-accurate displacement mapping that produced a very similar effect.

[@user-qg7oq6qw5c]

Believe me best engines from best studios will have similar results. Look At Demons Souls Ratchet and Horizon. Geometry is very high.

[@PachuStrauss]

I'm giving this video 100 Gold Doubloons just for the Unreal Menu Style Castle Flyover. I haven't played that game in 24 years and watching John's rendition gave me flashback chills.

[@sourceeee]

absolutely night and day on every front, what a huge graphics upgrade. The average player should be able to easily tell

[@doomztay]

Insanely impressive. I do wish I could get the nanite + lumen with 120fps turned on because I love the graphics but it's hard to play with the latency on 60fps. Hopefully they'll figure out a way to implement it in the 120fps. Maybe a second option of nanite + lumen on just 1080p 120fps. Idk, I play on 1080p so I would assume the ps5 or series x could handle 120 fps with nanite on a much lower resolution

[@MrInuhanyou123]

The issue is that lumen and nanite also impact the CPU as they are compute based techniques as much as they are graphics rasterized. So just lowering res will drop off improvements to performance the lower you go as the game becomes CPU limited

[@diarmuid4191]

I know I'm 7 months late, but I have a 4090/13900k PC build and it still dips below 120fps in 1440p. Looks like we'll be waiting a long while before more budget options can run this type of tech with high FPS'

[@what-di3vb]

@@diarmuid4191oh wow. are you sure it’s not a cpu issue or something else?

[@joeyazzata29]

@@what-di3vbit’s just extremely cpu demanding (especially lumen) I have a 4070 Ti / 5800x3d and tested a 4080 in my system… even at 1440p the 5800x3d is bottlenecking both GPU’s to the point of achieving the same framerate, the 4070 Ti by about 5-10%, and the 4080 by a bit over 20%

[@JonLynchIsAlive]

Great review and perspectives here guys. Regardless of the issues noted, this is all very exciting stuff. I don't play fortnight, but I'm tempted now. I'm super excited to see a big AAA campaign title ship with 5.1+ features. I'm looking at you CDPR and that new Witcher game. If this is any indication, we'll be seeing some amazing games in the near future.

[@BogzySama]

Might be much sooner than that. The new star wars jedi survivor coming out in march is using ue5. Dont know how many of these features it will have but it should be something.

[@MRSketch09]

Very cool vid. Thanks for doing it. Think the most important thing they talked about was "Shader stutter".. and whats going on. @28:15

[@thecrusher5066]

I gotta say I really love Unreal showcases. From Unreal Tournament, to Gears of War, to now Fortnite as the showcase material. It always makes me feel like “cool, this is the future!”.

[@daehxxiD]

Hehe, the fly-by at 11:00 was a nice homage to the original Unreal ;)

[@fluffygodzilla]

they even synced it to the Unreal Castle Flyby soundtrack

[@danw3735]

It really does look amazing, even on my 2080ti which is 2 generations old. Getting about 70-90 with the new effects on medium

[@kryptopcgamer589]

I get 50fps native 1440p everything maxed out without dlss on 3080ti. I get 90fps if i set dlss to quality but dosent look as good

[@itsaperionasentinel5446]

Imagine what I’m getting with my 1650 max Q 😭

[@NotTheAverageGamerz]

At 3:00 with the lumen enabled the area exiting the tunnel has the brightness over exposed. It's actually to the players benefit in this case to have it disabled as you would be able to see an enemy better if it was standing at the end of the tunnel. Also again at 10:45 the outside area is completely washed out and you would not be able to see any enemy at all.

[@aladdin8623]

The difference is a whole new level in visual quality. Congratulations to the epic developers. Happy to see them establishing an engine with a proper transition from cross gen to next gen. 21:25 Those caveats remember us though, that software lumen and nanite are techniques with compromises for cross gen hardware, which the current consoles still are. They are based on rdna2 with attached rt cores, which are just an improvisation. The shown Light Leakages are exactly the reason, why we need hardware based ray tracing. In this case rtao as a minimum in combination with rt shadows.

[@FSAPOJake]

Really wish they could get this into creative mode ASAP.

[@frozenduck74]

Isn’t it?

[@Hzuuuu]

Been waiting for DF's deep dive into this new update. This is honestly much more breathtaking than the Matrix demo.

[@marcoolivier4836]

Lol sure

[@MomentoIrae]

Did we watch different Matrix demos?

[@gavinderulo12]

@@MomentoIrae the matrix demo went for photorealism while fortnite has a very cartoony artstyle. So its definitely subjective. But I agree that the matrix demo looks more bland and boring.

[@Meansoduck]

the matrix demo was on another level, gotta disagree there. but yea this also looks amazing

[@notjustsad]

YOURE breathtaking!

[@ItsAkile]

Love the overall push for good performance with these features

[@mikolajo]

Impressive analysis as always, DF! Gotta love use of Unreal's soundtrack (even more URU's one:V)