DF Direct Weekly is our regularly scheduled show that focuses on the latest gaming and technology news – and sometimes that’s problematic because there isn’t always much to discuss. Developer Drama’s upcoming tactical shooter Unrecord seemed headed down that path last week until a remarkable video trailer arrived. Ultra-realistic with excellent materials work and lighting coupled with an excellent GoPro-style camera simulation creates a piece of gameplay that many thought was gimmicky – but it isn’t.
Of course, we’ve seen something similar before. Last year, a lot of attention was paid to the replay camera view taken from the game Raid 4, which also went ‘viral’ – and for similar reasons. The same overcast/blown lighting setup is in full effect, while camera movements add an extra layer of realism. These techniques have the same effect in Unrecorded, but with a twist – Unreal Engine 5’s material system and ray-traced lighting create an even more realistic effect.
As UE5 gets more widely adopted by developers with Lumen and Nanite, our guess is that you’re going to see a lot more videos like this – not just the extreme realism seen here, an advanced level of context In and more generally in scenes of achievement. With Unrecord, the only real question from our point of view is whether that dynamic camera really suits the gameplay, or whether a lot of users will suffer from motion sickness as a result. Based on Ride 4, a more traditional camera set-up gives a much more game-like presentation.
The gradual arrival of Unreal Engine 5 features in shipping games continues with the upcoming release of Legend of Avum, scheduled for July 20. It’s a fantasy-style game reminiscent of Heretic, Hexen, and even DF favorite, Lichdom Battlemage – but it’s in effect pulling the stops with both lumens and nanites, meaning beautiful light arrangements and some very detailed scenes. The use of next-gen features directly translates into recommended specifications that are causing some concern, requiring relatively modern eight-core CPUs as well as GPUs like the RTX 2080 Super and RX 5700 XT.
- 00:00:00 Introduction
- 00:00:45 News 01: Unrecorded footage surfaced
- 00:09:28 News 02: AVAM’s Amar showcases UE5 features
- 00:19:12 News 03: Horizon Burning Shores Launched!
- 00:26:36 News 04: ASUS ROG Ally specifications leak
- 00:34:48 News 05: STALKER shown with path tracing
- 00:41:35 Supporter Q1: Can Cyberpunk play RT Overdrive mode on PS5/Series X?
- 00:49:01 Pro Q2: If AMD sells APUs with a lot of graphics power, will they sell well?
- 00:55:21 Pro Q3: Does “going gold” really matter to modern sports?
- 01:01:00 Pro Q4: Will RTX Remix work with emulated games?
- 01:02:40 Pro Q5: When will we have another Digital Foundry office tour?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these specs can be roughly mapped to the current generation of consoles that target Unreal Engine 5 – but we can add one significant asterisk to this. It turns out that these recommended specs are targeting 1080p and 1440p at 60 frames per second. There’s no mention on image reconstruction via upscaling – whether that’s via Epic’s own TSR or alternative solutions like FSR2 or DLSS, but native resolution rendering with Lumen and Nanite is tough on the hardware. The developers are keen to emphasize the higher frame-rate angle, but of course, we’ll find that it’s possible to run the game on a lower-spec PC – you’ll just need to take a hit on resolution and/or frame-rate. Legends of Avaum looks really promising though, and you can be sure we’ll be seeing more of it closer to its July release date.
In this week’s Direct, we also spend some time sharing first impressions on Horizon Forbidden West’s Burning Shores expansion. We’ve got full coverage on that shortly, but suffice it to say – the game that won our award for Best Game Graphics of 2022 continues to thrive in 2023. Burning Shores is simply beautiful, with Guerrilla able to push visual quality still further without being weighed down by boat anchors supporting last-gen PS4 consoles. Density in detail and an extraordinary cloud simulation system that easily one-up Forbidden West are the highlights. It’s definitely worth buying if you’ve completed Forbidden West.
There’s more to come in Direct, but as always, our supporter Q+A session continues to deliver the goods. We share our thoughts on the extent to which Cyberpunk 2077 might be viable on RT Overdrive consoles, we discuss what ‘going gold’ really means in the current gaming era and Nvidia’s RTX Remix path-tracing injection technology Let’s deal with the question of how it can be implemented. imitation. Plus, will there ever be another Digital Foundry office tour? This may be a bit difficult considering that we closed our office in 2018 and went ‘full remote’, but we remain committed to other types of behind-the-scenes content on the DF Supporters program. Here’s an example!
All of which segues into a plug for our Patreon, basically! Last year we relaunched it with a view to using your support to deliver more PC content – and it’s starting now as a newcomer to our ranks strengthens our PC game reviews. We’re looking to deliver more PC coverage and more customized settings, while also beginning work on a new approach to PC hardware reviews, where we aim to deliver new types of content that will differentiate us from other outlets. join us!
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