The Matrix Awakens Demo Features 35,000 MetaHuman Pedestrians; Billions of Polygons for 7,000 Buildings

Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss presented The Matrix Awakens recently, showcasing the power of Unreal Engine 5 to create realistic digital models of Neo and Trinity. Utilizing technologies like MetaHuman, Nanite and Lumen, the demo is currently available free for PS5 and Xbox Series X. While not a full-fledged title, it does serve to highlight what’s possible in terms of visuals down the line.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a technical showcase without some raw figures. Epic Games has released a number of stats (via Digital Foundry) and confirmed that city as being 4,138 km wide and 4.968 km long with a surface of 15.79 km2 and14.519 km long perimeter. There are 45,073 parked cars with 38,146 being drivable (and destructible) 17,000 simulated traffic vehicles on the road (also destructible); and much more.

But perhaps most impressive is that there are 7,000 buildings made up of “hundreds” of assets, with each potentially having up to millions of polygons. This results in billions of polygons for just the buildings and doesn’t include the 35,000 MetaHuman pedestrians that have been simulated. It’s pretty crazy overall.

Check out the full list of stats for the demo below:

• The city is 4,138 km wide and 4.968 km long, slightly larger than the size of downtown Los Angeles
• The city surface is 15.79 km2
• The city perimeter is 14.519 km long
• There are 260 km of roads in the city
• There are 512 km of sidewalk in the city
• There are 1,248 intersections in the city
• There are 45,073 parked cars, of which 38,146 are drivable and destructible
• There are 17,000 simulated traffic vehicles on the road that are destructible
• 7,000 buildings
• 27,848 lamp posts on the street side only
• 12,422 sewer holes
• Almost 10 million unique and duplicated assets were created to make the city
• The entire world is lit by only the sun, sky and emissive materials on meshes. No light sources were placed for the tens of thousands of street lights and headlights. In night mode, nearly all lighting comes from the millions of emissive building windows
• 35,000 simulated MetaHuman pedestrians
• Average polygon count? 7000k buildings made of 1000s of assets and each asset could be up to millions of polygons so we have several billions of polygons to make up just the buildings of the city