Behold: Here Are The First Unreal Engine 4 Screens

Wired has an extremely lengthy piece about Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4, and the first public screens taken from the Demon Knight demo previously shown to developers in March at the Games Developers Conference. This demo was reportedly built by a team of 14 engineers over a period of three months.

"I had sleepless nights over this damn thing in the beginning, but I think we got the disasters out of the way," art director Chris Perna told Wired.

According to the report, the fourth-gen Unreal Engine will likely make Microsoft and Sony rethink how much horsepower they'll need for their next-generation hardware. "It will streamline game development, allowing studios to do in 12 months what can take two years or more today. And most important, it will make the video games that have defined the past decade look like puppet shows," Wired writes.

"There is a huge responsibility on the shoulders of our engine team and our studio to drag this industry into the next generation," says Cliff Bleszinski, Epic’s design director. "It is up to Epic, and Tim Sweeney in particular, to motivate Sony and Microsoft not to phone in what these next consoles are going to be. It needs to be a quantum leap. They need to damn near render Avatar in real time, because I want it and gamers want it—even if they don’t know they want it."

Bleszinski indicated that Epic has seen the specs of proposed new consoles and is actively lobbying for them to be more powerful. The studio reportedly started its next-gen crusade by re-introducing the UE3-powered Samaritan demo using a new set of specialized plug-ins and running on three then-high-end graphics cards. The "upgrade" and hardware enabled the engine to render realistic clothing, lifelike lighting, and highly detailed facial expressions flawlessly.

"We used it as an opportunity to make a point to the developers," Sweeney says. "'We want 10 times more power; here’s what we can do with it.'"

Wired reports that the new Unreal Engine 4 demo used a single Kepler GTX 680 GPU from Nvidia. The public will finally get a glimpse this June at E3 2012 -- likely the very Demon Knight demo shown behind closed doors just months prior. Gamers and developers alike are expected to wet their pants.

"Epic has redefined gaming before, and with Unreal 4 the company is doing it again," Wired writes.

To see the entire Unreal Engine 4 gallery, head here.

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felipetga 5 years ago

Damn, it seem my trusty GTX460 1GB, and my Q9550 at 3.8ghz have just gotten old!
JOSHSKORN 5 years ago

Too bad the XBOX 720 won't have the ability to play a game with Unreal Engine 4.
DRosencraft 5 years ago

While it's nice to see a new game engine and it is promising in terms of graphics, when I look at the gaming industry right now i don't see graphics being the problem. I know that particularly with the crowd here on Tom's the level of graphical performance is a big deal, when I look at gaming I see a lack of quality games. Most games don't have a problem with whether it's on PC or console. The basic problem is that games are in general fewer in number and less interesting. A game can be running Unreal 4 with a COre i7 and quad SLI GTX 690s, but if the story and gameplay aren't there it's not much. That's why I tend to stay ou tof the platform wars, because in the end a good game is a good game. That's why some games that are five, ten years old or more can be dusted off and pulled out to play even if compared to modern games their visuals are horrid. So, congratulations on the new engine, and it looks to be pretty good, but I'd settle for quality products using existing capabilities. I feel like more and more the visual fluff is getting promoted while games are becoming shorter and less entertaining.

Other Comments

felipetga 5 years ago

Damn, it seem my trusty GTX460 1GB, and my Q9550 at 3.8ghz have just gotten old!
jessterman21 5 years ago

Whoa, Diablo 4!
whimseh 5 years ago

felipetgaDamn, it seem my trusty GTX460 1GB, and my Q9550 at 3.8ghz have just gotten old!

..........Those are already old.
vestibule 5 years ago

Next CONSOLES a quantum leap? Last I heard they were using 7*** series GPU's, I'd be surprised if those would be comparable to an HD 7850 or better.

That's how it should be, and I'm not just saying that because I think PC's should always be ahead, it's just stupid to take a hit on hardware sales to release powerful consoles, now more than ever. Sony isn't doing so well right now despite having the technically superior console, and PS Vita sales have also been pretty bad compared to the 3DS. I'm very sure console gamers would be perfectly satisfied with an HD 7850 GPU in their consoles, or even an HD 7750 GPU since with games being optimized for that specifically, they should actually look pretty good in 1080p.
Borisblade7 5 years ago

Current consoles are pathetically weak atm, and even the proposed new ones are really sad. But they want to keep these things super cheap. And since consoles are very closed, you get no choice in the matter and have to settle for this pathetic hardware and again settle for putting up with it for far too long. This awful 10 year cycle is beyond stupid. Get back to the 5-6 year cycle for these things so we can get better tech. Or better yet get some hybrid pc/console thing that can be either upgraded or you can choose which power level to buy. Imagine 3 tiers of xbox, one that is adequate but cheap, another with better graphics, and a third for serious gamers who want uber power. As time progresses you can upgrade parts with simple plug in upgrades. They can keep parts mostly the same to ease programming, but still allow for a more open system that allows for better technology to come as its developed rather than 10 years later.
kryzzay 5 years ago

It's all well and good to shove high end hardware into the future consoles, but what about cost? PS3's were already costing Sony more than what they sold them for and they banked on getting most of the revenue from the games. I'm not paying more than $500-$600 for a console forget it.
vestibule 5 years ago

Borisblade7Current consoles are pathetically weak atm, and even the proposed new ones are really sad. But they want to keep these things super cheap. And since consoles are very closed, you get no choice in the matter and have to settle for this pathetic hardware and again settle for putting up with it for far too long. This awful 10 year cycle is beyond stupid. Get back to the 5-6 year cycle for these things so we can get better tech. Or better yet get some hybrid pc/console thing that can be either upgraded or you can choose which power level to buy. Imagine 3 tiers of xbox, one that is adequate but cheap, another with better graphics, and a third for serious gamers who want uber power. As time progresses you can upgrade parts with simple plug in upgrades. They can keep parts mostly the same to ease programming, but still allow for a more open system that allows for better technology to come as its developed rather than 10 years later.

Console upgradibilty has been done before, remember the expansion pack on the N64?

I personally liked it. But frankly, the vast majority of console gamers don't want to deal with feeling any pressure to upgrade until the next generation of consoles, not even in a fairly small way.
JOSHSKORN 5 years ago

Too bad the XBOX 720 won't have the ability to play a game with Unreal Engine 4.
DRosencraft 5 years ago

While it's nice to see a new game engine and it is promising in terms of graphics, when I look at the gaming industry right now i don't see graphics being the problem. I know that particularly with the crowd here on Tom's the level of graphical performance is a big deal, when I look at gaming I see a lack of quality games. Most games don't have a problem with whether it's on PC or console. The basic problem is that games are in general fewer in number and less interesting. A game can be running Unreal 4 with a COre i7 and quad SLI GTX 690s, but if the story and gameplay aren't there it's not much. That's why I tend to stay ou tof the platform wars, because in the end a good game is a good game. That's why some games that are five, ten years old or more can be dusted off and pulled out to play even if compared to modern games their visuals are horrid. So, congratulations on the new engine, and it looks to be pretty good, but I'd settle for quality products using existing capabilities. I feel like more and more the visual fluff is getting promoted while games are becoming shorter and less entertaining.
Flameout 5 years ago

that's why there are consoles, because they're SUPPOSE TO BE CHEAP. any of us serious gamers upgrade our pcs.
rohitbaran 5 years ago

I will probably have to see more images to perceive any improvement.
dthesleepless 5 years ago

Wow, Epic produced something that isn't completely drenched in bloom. Well done!
bustapr 5 years ago

looks good. It definitely looks like it can be improved though. there was too much red in those images, and having that planet-table thing on a red carpet sort of made it look strange. need to see more gritty environments and character faces to judge. good thing is that epic games are very good with their engines. Unreal engine 3 looks alot better than alot of current gen engines and its alot easier to run on a pc. and if you compare how UE3 looked 4 years ago to how it looks now, you definitely see EPICs is very good at improving the engines.
mcd023 5 years ago

so, he wants a $500-700 gpu in a $400 system?
Botia 5 years ago

All I see is blond, brunette, red head.
monsta 5 years ago

Looks amazing!
cold fire 5 years ago

Am I the only who's not very impressed by these pictures? I mean they sure do look nice but I expected something much better. Also, I hope that we don't just get better graphics next gen but better physics and AI too.
Cy-Kill 5 years ago

Now here's something Epic needs to do, take Unreal Engine 4 and make Unreal 3...!
kewlmunky 5 years ago

"And most important, it will make the video games that have defined the past decade look like puppet shows," Wired writes."

Crysis from 2007 makes all console games look like puppet shows, and most likely will still be ahead of what the next generation offers. Some of the screenshots look nice, but I doubt any console games will look anywhere near that, if anything it will be just their cinematics that reach that quality.
alidan 5 years ago

i just looked at the screens, not the wire frame, and its honestly pathetic.

did i get the down vote for that? no... read on.

take a look at everything they are showing... nothing of it is pushing more pollies, look at mafia 2 with phsyx and without, that is what i see in this demo, a bunch of phsyx enabled crap. i dont like the nvidia only solution, i never have and i never will.

the most graphically impressive thing there, i believe is those 2 statues, but im ok with how its currently done, by faking it. do i want to have a 1000$ gpu just to play a video game? HELL no and because of past things, i never want an nvidia card period.

this is talking SOULY base on the screenshots, and that this will ONLY be on the nvidia line of cards, and all i can say is this sucks.

it will be impressive to see in motion, but how much of this demo is phsyx based and how much of it is a true push forward?

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