Unreal Engine 5 Forest Demo

A photorealistic forest demo running in Unreal Engine 5 captured at 4K on my PC. I think it's a pretty impressive showcase of Lumen's GI solution which is technically a cheaper form of ray-tracing lighting, so every shade and bounce light you see here are all calculated in real-time and will change dynamically, no baking whatsoever. Hats off to PolyAsset3D for creating all the assets and made the demo available to the public.
However, Lumen reflection isn't working so well in this demo, which is evidenced when looking at the puddles, where the reflected trees look kinda blurry and lacking in detail. Please note that UE5's new techs are still very much a work in progress. Epic has already managed to get Nanite working with trees and foliage, it just needs more optimisations and fine turnings. I think they're also looking to improve reflections and the way translucent materials such as tree leaves react with light. So, we should see some noticeable improvements in the next big UE5 update.

[@jimmykruspe]

They can finally call it “Real Engine”

[@thomasstahlmecke9154]

no, if you use VR, the immersion has a cap. But I think Unreal engine 6 or 7 in maybee 20 years and in VR you shouldnt see a difference of reality. After then we can plan a holodeck next^^. We need 32k or 64k resolution for our eyes, but in time it will be coming. It all will be come before the 21th centory ends.

[@Rattengeist]

@@thomasstahlmecke9154 You are fun at parties

[@aceparable1]

@@Rattengeist Why are you talking about parties? Are you 14?

[@G6Mr-]

@@thomasstahlmecke9154 Maybe, or something might happen and destroy most of human kind to leave us get back to horses and bows and spears

[@Rattengeist]

@@aceparable1 Good to know you don't understand either. Have fun staying dumb.

[@GeneralThe3rd]

The graphics are so good that I just got about 6 mosquito bites.

[@ensignbodybag]

Simply stunning detail. Difficult to believe how far computer graphics technology has evolved since the first 3DFX cards - and yes, I bought one!

[@sihotech]

I still have 3DFX Voodoo 1 in my closet somewhere. Still remember first time I saw GLQuake @ 640x480.

[@1981_Reacts]

I had Voodoo 3 2000 AGP. Great card and good memories playing Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena

[@koozt9494]

Geforce mx440 and fx 5600 was my first gpus 🤘. And quake favourite game OFC.

[@thronosstudios]

One of the best I've seen by far. So much detail! I could totally use this background for a forest scene in a film, not necessarily for a game. The idea that this stuff can be done in real-time really opens up a dimension of opportunity like never before 🔥🔥🔥

[@ARCAD3BLOOD]

It is an opportunity... if you have two rtx'es 4090 or 3090 ti at least.

[@ChannelTrapesium]

I agree. Imagine playing PUBG with this kind of environment. wooo eeehhh..

[@AntonQvarfordt]

Really? Like what?

[@thronosstudios]

@@ARCAD3BLOOD Doubt it. Especially now that foliage and trees can be Nanite assets. And again, I said film, not real-time gameplay, so with a 3080 Ti it's manageable and with plenty of power to spare.

[@thronosstudios]

@@AntonQvarfordt What do you mean like what? Imagine having the power at home to make any scene/background you can think of and never having to worry about paying through your nose to fly to places around the world that look like the ones you can create in UE5. Or heck, you don't have to worry about film cameras, tripods, cranes, etc. either! Point being, if things can look this realistic in real-time, anything is possible for film and CGI cinematics with this engine without leaving your own house.

[@randomletters1834]

I cant imagine what an entire Skyrim map would be like in this much detail..

[@ZacklFair]

Build it!

[@randomletters1834]

@@ZacklFair I wish I had the time and knowledge lol

[@xorkatoss]

lol maybe in 50 hours we will know

[@Dennis-nc3vw]

You're computer would be turned into a puddle.

[@randomletters1834]

@@Dennis-nc3vw Probably... Lol

[@DejayClayton]

Definitely re-record this video in Unreal Engine 5.1, which has many of the improvements you list in your video description.

[@paxe.j.1723]

For the first time in years I get the same feeling I once got when I first saw images of the forests of Oblivion.

[@frostyflicks9733]

dude, our imaginations have been sold short until now! Oblivion > Skyrim all day

[@davesmith5525]

Amazing! The future looks so good for VR gaming using UE5.

[@Lantanum057]

Imagine, VRMMORPG lol

[@jaymodh7214]

This is incredible! Can't believe how far we've come. Maybe further improvements can be made to the audio? I found the footsteps sounded the same for a particular scene, which took away from the realness, if only a little bit. Some randomness in the sound of the footsteps such as the crispness of the rustle, the loudness, the duration, etc. can elevate the experience. This is not to undermine what Unreal Engine has managed to achieve. I think they've done an amazing job!

[@Aethelvlad]

Metasounds will make a 5 second job of that task

[@3duder]

Great interpretation! Really love how far you took the quality level. Can't get past an eerie feeling though that we are all using the same assets and materials and tweaks. You perfected it though

[@danieldouglasclemens]

It looks good, but still artificial due to the lack of movement of plants and trees. I am currently most impressed when really extreme weather conditions hit the environment. Strong winds with bending trees, leaves being tossed into the air, moving grass and foliage, puddles or even snow building up, the correct physical behaviour of mud and uneven ground on vehicles. And what I always find missing in forests is also at least a few smaller animals (e.g. birds). We have now officially reached fotorealism in specific areas. Yay! Next step: Same quality in VR and realistic sensory feedback (not just haptics) and at the same time reducing price and size/weight of necessary components and increasing availability.

[@jlepage36]

When quality like this can be experienced in VR, VR tourism and VR vacations will become a real thing.

[@cruz1ale]

@@prinkip8363 wut

[@Dogger1230]

I’m tired of seeing these demos. When are they and are they even able to be incorporated into games at this exact level of detail???

[@LHITShappy]

This is not really an official tech demo per se, it's just a forest map someone created with Unreal 5 and I decided to give it a go to see how it looks and runs on my PC. But yes...I kinda agree with you, I feel like video game graphics have stagnated somewhat for the past few years probably due to the fact that devs still have to cater for older consoles/hardware as a result of covid and shortages, therefore, we've yet to witness any real jump in visual fidelity for this gen, the closest thing we've to a true next-gen experience is probably the Matrix city demo.

[@poiuytrewq3546]

RDR2 already looks better than this

[@rubenjorge13]

@@poiuytrewq3546 it doesn't

[@AstroTrain100]

Exactly, that's what I was expecting what next Gen consoles games would look like the Matrix City Demo. Crysis was the last game where they pushed what a PC can do.

[@thronosstudios]

When you can afford it

[@Dennis-nc3vw]

Takes me back to watching Cyris tech demos 15 years ago.

[@highskyspace]

Very good. After 15 years we achive Crysis 1 (2007) graphic level 👍 P.S. - In video this is not all that UE5 can do. Author, thank you for the beautiful scene, nice work.

[@fyousuckers9381]

i think we are way beyond crysis level graphics !!!

[@Ekvental]

@@fyousuckers9381 so rewatch e3 2006 gameplay trailer Crysis 1)))))

[@vikingnusantara]

The leaf scattering is mind blowing. Thanks to nanites. Just give it another decade, and using this with VR on META learning architecture and medics.

[@blackheartgaming6121]

absolutely beautiful i cant wait to do this

[@dawkinshater101]

i can imagine that a next gen vr headset with this level of graphics will look absolutely mind blowing. like that movie ready player one

[@damianukaszewicz3330]

If it wasn't for camera imitating taking steps like you're going downstairs, I'd say that it's real life tropical forest footage. At least daytime.

[@Igndraw]

We're finally starting to reach realistic forest in games! a few more years and it'll be awesome to play the new games.

[@mho...]

the next 10+ years in gaming will be crazy!

[@TristanCleveland]

Wonderful. Funny that so many developers take this kind of beauty, give you a gun, and say "now shoot stuff." I hope to see more interesting, immersive, beautiful games with this kind of technology.

[@Hideo_Kojima_yt]

Now looks better because plants can use nanite, so no LODs and other improvements to Lumen too.

[@Wolfimann22]

Really beautiful, looks amazing.

[@u_walk2251]

beautiful, especially the crispy light is awesome

[@EpicPianoArrangements]

Seeing this is such a tease… You can’t allow us to play this absolutely beautiful tech demo? Would love to see how it runs on my 3080.

[@LHITShappy]

I did not make this, all credits go to the assets creator PolyAsset 3D, if you go onto his/her KZbin channel, you should be able to find a download link to this demo on one of the videos.

[@teparadox]

prolly need a 3080 i7 32g to run this version of skyrim :D

[@marklipson]

I don't game and that is one of the most incredible things I've ever seen.

[@seandidsomething]

you can really tell some of the textures are low quality but the lighting is great.

[@geoffdavids7647]

I really want to experience this in VR

[@tylerdobson7868]

Just go outside...

[@pedestrian_0]

no u don't i tried this and i projectile vomited into carpet..it give me headache and i almost wanna end it all, but in a video game of course

[@ERTChimpanzee]

@@pedestrian_0 It takes few days or few weeks so your brain can get to used with VR.

[@amarek_]

this music is base like the witcher 3. i really could imagine this to witcher 4 :) and the graphics are awesome :)

[@lucaspimentel6844]

Puta merda! Como brasileiro, tenho que dizer que essa é a floresta em renderização gráfica mais realista que eu já vi até agora. A maioria dos cenários de florestas feitas pelos designers gráficos, são dessas florestas comumente encontradas apenas nas regiões mais frias do globo, como no Canadá e em muitos países da Europa... Embora eu ficasse impressionado com o nível gráfico, não ficava tão impressionado ao ponto de ficar de boca aberta. Pois essas florestas estão muito longe da minha realidade... Agora as florestas tropicais, principalmente da região amazônica, é bastante familiar para mim. Sei bem como elas são na vida real. E essa renderização gráfica realmente me deixou muito impressionado. Dessa vez, o bastante para me deixar de boca aberta. Meus parabéns pelo excelente trabalho! Realmente está muito fiel a uma floresta tropical real.

[@valentinsosa5730]

we pense que que era hate pero lo primero que dice significa santo cielo jsja 😆

[@M7x0.75]

A vegetação do vídeo é bem parecida com a dos parques na região sudeste. Não sei se a vegetação de aí de cima é mais parecida ainda.

[@lucaspimentel6844]

@@M7x0.75É bem parecido. Inclusive, até tomei um susto com uma das cenas, na primeira vez que vi. Parecia bastante com uma mata da qual já visitei aqui perto da minha cidade.

[@jstn9914]

How Crysis felt back in 2007.

[@blueplayz3639]

felt like its me there. pleasant music. I feel better now. thanks .

[@mikehunt7888]

Looks like the woods where I shit myself before I got my pants down.

[@JRM92B]

A game like tomb raider would be incredible with this kind of nature realism

[@SnarkpitSam]

GOB SMACKED! We are entering the realm of GODS! Genius at work! TY!

[@monolous1919]

このリアルなグラフィックの中にあるファンタジーな植生の感じ、 realにunrealって感じがして好き

[@fakeshrew]

I can imagine microsoft life simulator: simulating the world down to the smallest grain of sand, with flight sim 2020 and different vehicle sims built into the same game...

[@LHITShappy]

That would be my dream game!

[@mktzi7678]

Now i want game lookin like this and you play as one of those native people of amazon rain forest like xingu warrior

[@dr.x4050]

Superb !

[@G6Mr-]

Imagine if this is a rework of a old rpg game u love, Man this is epic.

[@pcigrock5874]

some nextgen feeling from 2005-07 ea3

[@44vowen36]

this is exactly what i saw on my dream in back 2017 i got dejavu and so much things going that gave me chills, what in the world just happened to me.

[@manos6590]

Green Hell 2 looks dope

[@SkillOp]

I've never tried VR but when VR gets good enough I would paid to just get to walk around this forest. hopefully in another 5 years it wont cost $10,000 do run this in VR at home.

[@liamwhitehouse9428]

Wow that's super amazing I love it ! That's similar to the rainforests in QLD where I live. Very realistic layout .

[@kittenburger_prime]

Billboards and gonna be billboards no matter how pretty you make em. Always hoping for some new volumetric solution to foliage.

[@sunifred8517]

Very nice video. What's the music source? According to youtube it's Gaba by Isthupha Sakho, but I can only find some hip hop remix, not the original

[@rovhalt6650]

Great. Now Star Citizen is gonna have to update their engine again.

[@willie9899]

Seen some LOD snapping (lighting?). Aside from that, this is incredibly well done. Movie quality in real time. This gives me ideas. UE 5 is insane

[@KillerTacos54]

This is just absolute insanity

[@cloakedingravity]

It's giving Monster Hunter vibes and I'm here for it

[@gyanendu_anand]

He deserves more subs then the comments.

[@user-xu2vi5ok5d]

Thanks Michael...

[@arnomeesters1]

man, looking at this with my 4080, made me speechless and smile :)

[@vyacheslav_tashkin]

Демка конечно красивая, но днем в лесу не бывает так темно, даже в пасмурную погоду)

[@Batorg1]

Потрясающе, очень впечатляет. Хочется игру по властелину колец с такой картинкой.

[@nintendians]

looks great.

[@IwrsTheKing007]

honestly, if the camera moved like someone filming, then I prolly would've thought this was real life

[@arkemal]

Amazing scene! Well done

[@MadStoos]

Had to put my smartphone to a freezer to watch this demo

[@Jedi_Luke]

I need a Tomb Raider or Uncharted game to look like this!

[@fahimmontasir5003]

Imagine if " The Forest " game had this graphics!

[@CastellaTV]

they will in a couple of years. but the downside is people will need a beast PC to actually handle the graphics and such. The average gamer dont have the money to spend 5k on a gamer PC. so most will buy a budget PC and play on low settings anyways

[@AnthonyCarrick]

That game is scary enough, let alone being basically a photo....

[@King-O-Hell]

Reminds of a game I played called Green Hell. hehe This is unbelievably beautiful

[@mr.sinisterx]

We're getting there, still some work left to do, but we are getting there.

[@AllanGildea]

Outlandish!

[@MarshallSweet]

So I'm not sure if this is true but this is my take on why graphics are still the way they are I games. Just think about it, most movies nowadays are of course mostly cgi/3d assets. Now the thing is they are so detailed they use extremely powerful software and graphics cards dedicated to rendering the scene. So my take on this is that we have the ability and means to make games look almost picture perfect but we don't have the technology to run it yet.

[@LHITShappy]

I think that’s always been the case. Hardware aside, the thing is that games need to run in real-time, while movies typically have the luxury of waiting for hours or even days to render out each scene perfectly with an offline path-tracer. But with consumer GPUs becoming much more powerful nowadays, and the introduction of ray-tracing techniques ie. Lumen and physically based materials into the world of real-time graphics plus UE5’s Nanite, the gap between real-time and offline rendering have never been closer. I think the next big steps forward would be to make high quality real-time path-tracing a reality.

[@BLAZE_YouTube_]

Beautiful

[@spaceman7915]

Had to keep reminding myself it's not real. From playing games in the 80s when sprites were the graphics, unreal and other early 3D engines of the 90's and early 2000, over the last 15 years the level of details and physics etc.. has just "exploded". I could only imagine this in my childhood and just imagine this level of details incorporated into holographics!

[@cr4nkk623]

very impressive!

[@xpro3199]

Woowww...this forrest is beautiful...success bro🙂👍

[@lanceobe6801]

I want this in VR

[@lukes472]

Imagine this forest for Ancestors Humankind

[@oskarossii]

Where did you get the background music?!?

[@nicolasbarrieu9885]

Thats insane! How heavy was these particular scene only?

[@LHITShappy]

At epic settings, I’m getting around 37-24 fps at native 4k on an rtx 3080. But for this recording I was using 75% TSR upscaled to 4k in order to get a smoother experience, as you can see in the top right corner for this video, it’s around 40s to upper 20s fps, a couple fps higher without recording.

[@gregkral4467]

beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

[@sirfrancischl]

Oh my, it needs a Nanosuit and it's the real deal ....

[@metalceesie219]

i wanne walk here in VR !

[@frahohen]

The hardware these days is too expensive for this type of rendering. They should instead focus on supporting hardware to get cheaper, so we all can enjoy this beauty. This only will be considered to be implemented in games, if this happens.

[@zeustiger2004]

I'm waiting it

[@spo3sk516]

we need part 2 with 5.1 and nanite leaves

[@LHITShappy]

Just to clarify, as mentioned in my description, I did not make this, I was only responsible for the recording. All credits go to PolyAsset 3D who created all the assets including the demo itself. If you’re interested in this particular project and wanted to see more, please visit PolyAsset 3D’s channel, I think he/she is probably working on a new demo with UE5.1.

[@AntonQvarfordt]

pretty cool

[@MichaelHurdleStudio]

Looking pretty good.

[@digitalflow5044]

Nice Job! Very realistic What is you PC specs?

[@LHITShappy]

Just to clarify as mentioned in my description, I did the recording of this demo on my PC, but I did not create any of the assets nor the demo itself, all credits go to the original author - PolyAsset 3D, you can also find the download link to this demo on his/her channel. Btw I’m running on a 3080 with a zen3 processor, but there’s settings to adjust to make it run smoothly on a range of PCs.

[@PavlinhoPasha]

it looks very realistic!!!

[@EthanMallonee]

With this almost looking perfectly photoreal, I can't help but wonder how good this would look with UE5.1. Nanite keeps blowing my mind the more I think about it, and now that it works for foliage... goodness. This could eventually even help potato PCs/laptops run high quality games by just lowering a setting for poly count, right?

[@prajitvishnukarthik8886]

Michael I agree to your work. But who gonna pay us for this amazing work? With what kind of client are you working?

[@lehisowk2929]

WOW IT WORKED!!!!! THANKS MAN

[@Alexander_Turi]

Where can I download this to my Xiaomi Mi 203045 plus ultra ?

[@joker709_7]

Dude imagine these graphics in a Far Cry 3 remaster

[@NameNotAlreadyTaken2]

Crysis remaster looking good

[@RinkelJeroen]

We used to joke about games that felt like a 'walking simulator'. I guess the joke's on us now.

[@dainco08]

WOWWW

[@SentinelTheOne]

This is truely awesome. Would you share this? I am currently considering to use such an environment for experiments on human navigation.

[@LHITShappy]

As mentioned in my description, this is just a recording I made from a demo created by someone else, so all credit go to the actual author - PolyAsset 3D, who created all the assets including this demo. If you go on PolyAsset 3D’s channel, you can find the download link to this demo, but to get access to the actual assets you need to buy it on Unreal Marketplace, I think it’s called Rain Forest Pack

[@jeggg1]

the potential for horror games 💀💀

[@yuwong5850]

Amazing! Are these assets made by yourself?

[@LHITShappy]

No I did not make them. As mentioned in my description, all credits go to PolyAsset 3D who created all the assets and made the demo available for download. I simply just tested out the demo and made a recording on my PC to see how it looks and runs.

[@stardaggerrihannsu2363]

YOU PICKED A BAD TIME TO GET LOST FRIEND!!!

[@MaxCaud]

I think lighting needs an adjustment, crushed blacks and highlights are overblown. But certain areas look pretty close to real life which is cool

[@JustIn-sr1xe]

If someone can port ARK 1 to UE5. That would be great.

[@gabrielnobrev]

Very good but would be better with just the ambiance sounds and no music