Unreal Engine 5 Is “Chasing Photorealism”

We’ve been wondering whether games will ever manage to get to the point of photorealistic visuals for a long time now, but with the advancements that the industry keeps making in technology every few years definitely gives us reason to believe that we might actually be closer to it than we though. The next generation of consoles is bringing about some impressive technological leaps, and Epic Games seem to be going all-in on that, as they recently showed with an impressive tech demo for their new Unreal Engine 5.

In fact, according to Quentin Staes-Polet, General Manager, India and SEA, of Epic Games, Unreal Engine 5 is built very specifically to “chase” photorealistic graphics in games. Speaking in an interview with Indian Express, Staes-Polet said that not only does the new engine allow developers to save a lot of time while making their games, it also lets them come that much closer to “full reality simulation.”

“We are chasing photorealism with Unreal Engine 5,” Staes-Polet said. “The new engine will save a lot of time and at the same time, it gets us one step closer to full reality simulation.”

“With Unreal Engine 5, you can take 4K Cinema quality 3D assets and ingest them in the engine as it is and work with them,” he added. “So that’s like a massive change as you can save a lot of time and on top of it, it brings photorealistic gaming in the future.”

It goes without saying that a scripted, smaller tech demo that looks that impressive probably isn’t as perfectly representative of what full fledged games will look like as you’d think- but there’s quite a lot to be excited about when it comes to Unreal Engine 5 and what it’s doing. Does that mean it’s going to bring us closer to photorealistic graphics in games? That remains to be seen, but the potential is certainly there.