A surprising tech demo for credibility and visual impact: this is the Redwood Forest by MAWI United, based on the latest from the launch of Unreal Engine 5.1 and which we challenged with the RTX 4090 by NVIDIA.
What certainly stands out are lights, shadows and the exceptional amount of detail, with all the elements produced entirely in a procedural way starting from a series of acquisitions in professional photogrammetry.
A showdown for Epic’s engine, which allowed us to take a walk in a detailed environment and built in its entirety by the same engine in an area of one square kilometer. Not a single asset was placed manually, making the end result even more stunning.The demo proposes 4K textures captured from the real world for firs and redwoods, rocks and any other decorative or non-decorative elements, all randomly generated and placed on the ground by the graphics engine, including broken branches, foliage and puddles.
Nanite it is massively used to show assets composed of millions of polygons in a dynamic way as we get closer or further away, painting an advanced level of detail and a scenographic visual horizon.The setting is available in two different biomeswith a spring and a winter version that shows us how diametrically opposite climates can be reproduced with the same astonishing level of photorealism.
Our test system consisting of a Ryzen 9 7900X, a RTX 4090 TUF and 32 GB of DDR5 RAM memory was put to the test by this splendid technical exercise and we recorded an average of 24 FPS in 4K, 45 in QuadHD and 56 in FullHD, a clear sign not only of the impressive quality of the project, but also a symptom of a product not intended for the public and which does not reflect what the performance will be in-game of the top titles produced in Unreal Engine 5 after a long optimization work.
Also, it is worth pointing out that there is a time scaler ma in this tech demo it is not possible to benefit from the potential of DLSS3 that, with technology Frame generationwith which in supported games it is also possible to triple the framerate by producing frames outside the pipeline.
In general we were particularly impressed to see such a show rendered locally and come to life before our eyes, especially considering that it is a package that it can be used by any software house decide to buy it. The team has already promised new environments on its official channels and we, as always, can’t wait to put them to the test!
If you want to find out what the future of the gaming industry holds at this juncture, here are the games in Unreal Engine 5 coming soonfrom Hellblade 2 to Wukong.
