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Unreal Engine 4 Elemental Tech Demo Available for Download

By - Source: Tom's Hardware US | B 0 comment

The oh-so-shiny Elemental tech demo of the Unreal Engine 4 can now be run on your PC.

It's been quite a while since we saw the Elemental Tech Demo of the Unreal Engine 4, which we first saw sometime throughout 2012, but the software behind it has now finally been published on the web.

Whether the release of this was the intention of the developers is unclear, and is at best questionable, as there is not really an interface to go with the demo. You'll manually have to configure your resolution and full-screen settings through notepad, and because it comes in a portable configuration, you'll manually have to initiate the install of the VC++ 2013 runtime.

Using the tilde [ ~ ] button you can bring up the console, though many of the commands won't be all that useful. The command "Stat FPS" can be useful if you want to bring up an FPS counter though, so be sure to check that out if you're curious how well your machine is performing. To close the demo press Alt+F4, though if that doesn't work, you can always type "exit" into the console and press enter.

Download the file here.

Unreal Engine 4 Elemental Demo

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  • 1 Hide
    jessterman21 , April 29, 2014 3:28 PM
    Please change the title of this article to "Cruddy PS4 version of Unreal Engine 4 Elemental Tech Demo Available for Download"
  • 0 Hide
    Blazer1985 , April 29, 2014 5:17 PM
    Well, UE4 subscribers have access to the whole "elemental" project and source code since a few days ago. Looks like someone just compiled it and put it on mediafire, and that explains why it lacks many options :-)
    It was only meant as a guideline for developers.
  • 0 Hide
    Blazer1985 , April 29, 2014 5:24 PM
    Anyway the 4.10 version of the engine adds support for the linux os and the steam machines, I guess that should take the headlines :-D
  • Display all 12 comments.
  • 0 Hide
    dragonsqrrl , April 29, 2014 5:39 PM
    Tried this out last night. Is anyone else having trouble running it in anything but a 16:9 aspect ratio? Even when I set the res to 1920x1200 it still runs 16:9.

    Also the demo doesn't look super impressive by default, but you can do quite a bit of tweaking by specifying certain settings in the ini. Of course this also makes the demo a lot more demanding. In my case just turning the res up to 1920x1200 was enough to bring my system to its knees. I probably averaged in the mid 20s with all other settings left at default.
  • 0 Hide
    beetlejuicegr , April 30, 2014 3:55 AM
    can you guys drop some tweak settings in here? i am not super impressed with the demo , i want to see the full potential of the engine from this demo
  • 0 Hide
    frozentundra123456 , April 30, 2014 5:28 AM
    Put in a Baytrail atom and dual boot to windows and android, and you might have a winner, even if the price is considerably higher. Intel keeps saying they are going to run android on Baytrail, but I somehow never appears. I dont really see the point to run android on last gen atom, when there must be some cheap ARM chip that would do the job for less.

    BTW. I would be very, very reluctant to buy a cheap Acer tablet. I have an Iconia Tab A-100, and it is absolutely a terrible device. Dog slow, awful wi-fi connectivity, buggy OS, and lousy battery life.
  • 0 Hide
    Steveymoo , April 30, 2014 7:12 AM
    Quote:
    Put in a Baytrail atom and dual boot to windows and android, and you might have a winner, even if the price is considerably higher. Intel keeps saying they are going to run android on Baytrail, but I somehow never appears. I dont really see the point to run android on last gen atom, when there must be some cheap ARM chip that would do the job for less.

    BTW. I would be very, very reluctant to buy a cheap Acer tablet. I have an Iconia Tab A-100, and it is absolutely a terrible device. Dog slow, awful wi-fi connectivity, buggy OS, and lousy battery life.



    Wrong article man.
  • 0 Hide
    Memnarchon , April 30, 2014 9:59 AM
    I tried this yesterday. It has one of the worst textures I 've ever seen in tech demos. I guess this was something like a PS4/XBONE version like previous people said...
  • 0 Hide
    dragonsqrrl , April 30, 2014 2:09 PM
    Quote:
    can you guys drop some tweak settings in here? i am not super impressed with the demo , i want to see the full potential of the engine from this demo


    -Tj- over at Guru3D posted these settings:

    [/Script/Engine.GameUserSettings]
    ResolutionSizeX=1920 <<< for example change to
    ResolutionSizeY=1080 <<<change to
    LastUserConfirmedResolutionSizeX=1920 << change to
    LastUserConfirmedResolutionSizeY=1080<< change to
    FullscreenMode=1


    you can add this extra for "more detail"

    r.ScreenPercentage=-1
    r.PostProcessAAQuality=4

    r.SkeletalMeshLODBias=0
    r.ViewDistanceScale=1.0

    r.LightFunctionQuality=1
    r.ShadowQuality=5
    r.Shadow.CSM.MaxCascades=4
    r.Shadow.MaxResolution=1024
    r.Shadow.RadiusThreshold=0.03
    r.Shadow.DistanceScale=1.0
    r.Shadow.CSM.TransitionScale=1.0

    r.MotionBlurQuality=4
    r.AmbientOcclusionLevels=3
    r.AmbientOcclusionRadiusScale=1.0
    r.DepthOfFieldQuality=2
    r.RenderTargetPoolMin=400
    r.LensFlareQuality=2
    r.SceneColorFringeQuality=1
    r.EyeAdaptationQuality=2
    r.BloomQuality=5
    r.FastBlurThreshold=7
    r.UpsampleQuality=3
    r.TonemapperQuality=1
    r.LightShaftQuality=1
    r.MaxAnisotropy=8

    r.TranslucencyLightingVolumeDim=64
    r.RefractionQuality=2
    r.SSR.Quality=2
    r.SceneColorFormat=4
    r.DetailMode=2
    r.TranslucencyVolumeBlur=1
    UI.BlurRadius=1.2
    r.MaterialQualityLevel=1

    I haven't tried most of them, but the ones I have tried definitely make it more demanding (r.MaterialQualityLevel=1, r.DetailMode=2, r.SSR.Quality=2, r.RefractionQuality=2). I would probably start with anything that has "quality" or "detail" in it.
  • 0 Hide
    jessterman21 , April 30, 2014 3:47 PM
    Quote:
    -Tj- over at Guru3D posted these settings:


    Yeah these are the High settings from the Cave demo - you can view them in the console after selecting the two GTXs in game. I copied and pasted these into that user config file and it makes things a little better - with a 20% perf hit. Still no way to envoke better AO or that amazing Global Illumination seen in the first version.
  • -1 Hide
    Lascar , May 1, 2014 4:23 AM
    ok so platform devs still don't get it, please stop with all the glossing of things. How can old armour thats covered in mold, rust, dust plaque and so many other things be so glossy? How come lava flow is so glossy when it should be a matte tone? Just look at the start, the decrepit stone pillars are so not stone pillars at all, more like newly placed marble pillars.

    Why they keep making unreal engine so glossy and not move even 1 inch towards more realistic colors and toning. Are we to keep playing games with graphics like Mass Effect 3 on ultra high end cards? Cmon you can certainly do better.

    Heh well if this keeps going on either people will stop playing unreal engine based games, or people will stop buying high end cards at some point because game platforms like unreal engine are not evolving at all.
  • -1 Hide
    Lascar , May 1, 2014 4:26 AM
    And on top of that the textures, lighting and effects are really not impressive at all. So many effects missing right there. So basically they added some more AA and AF to match platforms like Cryengine visual but ultimately failing by still being unreal engine 3.