Epic Games Shows Off Photorealistic Texture, Foliage and Light Rendering in Unreal Engine 5.2 Demo

Epic Games wowed attendees of the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco with the latest features of its Unreal Engine 5.2 game engine, showcasing the power of real-time rendering and responsive, highly-detailed materials.

The team demonstrated the capabilities of the system with renderings of an electric car from Rivian, allowing for various aesthetic changes to the car's surface. In a second, developers could add in paint variations and or splatter mud on the vehicle. The mud was then washed off as the car drove through water.

Using Unreal's Nanite, the Rivian truck boasted an impressive 71 million polygons, allowing for an extremely high level of detail that focuses on various interactive layers to be stacked on top of one another. Nanite also wasn’t the best equipped to depict in-game foliage in its initial iteration but has since been revamped to make plants look more realistic and more responsive to stimulus.

Lumen, the much-anticipated lighting technology feature, was also showcased in Fortnite's Chapter 4, demonstrating realistic light flooding within the game’s environment.

At the event's close, Epic Games wrapped up all the different technologies it had shown off using a new programming language called Verse. Thankfully, developers who want to try out the powerful tools won’t have to wait. Unreal Engine 5.2 is available online now.

In other gaming news, Lego 2K Drive has received an official announcement trailer.