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Cinema-Quality Unity Engine 'Adam' Demo Claims To Run Real-Time On GeForce GTX 980 (hothardware.com)

Posted by timothy on from the leadering-to-better-graphics dept.

MojoKid writes: This week at GDC 2016 the team at Unity revealed their stable release of the Unity 5.3.4 game engine along with a beta of Unity 5.4. There are a number of upgrades included with Unity 5.4 including in-editor artist workflow improvements, VR rendering pipeline optimizations, improved multithreaded rendering, customizable particles which can use Light Probe Proxy Volumes (LPPV) to add more realistic lighting models and the ability to drop in textures from tools like Quixel DDo Painter. But for a jaw-dropping look at what's possible with the Unity 5.4 engine, check out the short film "Adam" that Unity has developed to demo it. The film showcases all of Unity Engine 5.4's effects and gives a great look at what to expect from Unity-based games coming in 2016. Unity will showcase the full film at Unite Europe 2016 in Amsterdam. But what's most impressive about Adam perhaps is that Unity says that this is all being run in real-time at 1440p resolution on just an upper-midrange GeForce GTX 980 card.

6 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is nowhere near cinema quality. The textures aren't all that great and the lighting needs work.

    Also note how they used robots exclusively because plastic and metal is easy to do. I'd like to see them try making a realistic looking human or animal.

    1. Re:Whatever by Junta · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's interesting that it's at the point where you probably have to actually have some experience working in the field to spot the 'cheats' going on compared to realtime. Things have come very far and it looks very impressive. The quality of the cheats have just gotten crazy over time.

      No indirect lighting, no indirect lighting, no caustics, no hair/fur. Lot's of places where the lighting looks complex, but can be baked into the textures. Very carefully set to avoid those being noticable omissions/limitations.

      All the shader work going on is pretty impressive.

      The Unity demoes finally look to be even with the Unreal demoes.

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    2. Re:Whatever by mwvdlee · · Score: 2

      You should watch Toy Story 1 again and be surprised by how dramatically graphics, both realtime and cinematic, have improved.

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  2. This is pretty impressive by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Especially considering that we're not talking about an engine with a price tag that makes AAA studios stagger. This is affordable, high quality rendering.

    One of the last big strongholds of AAA gaming, i.e. high speed, high quality graphics, is coming to an end. Certainly we won't see everyone who happens to have an idea for a game to crank out something over the weekend that dethrones the next clone in the Battlefield series, but this could well mean we're heading to a time when "indie games" are no longer games that have to convince with their content, wit or charm because they can't simply blow us down with effects.

    Hmm.

    I don't know... should I welcome this or mourn it?

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    1. Re:This is pretty impressive by Junta · · Score: 3, Informative

      Though the engines are capable, it still takes a great deal of work to actually bring out those capabilitiies. You still need laborious modeling and texturing work if you want something 'AAA' and can't just assemble things out of stock content from the asset stores.

      Titles developed on a budget have not come remotely close to the aspirational demos of the engines they have used to date, and I wouldn't expect that to change anytime soon.

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  3. GTX 980 is not "upper midrange" by Cowclops · · Score: 4, Informative

    The GTX 980 is not an upper midrange card. Its $500 and about the only thing faster is a GTX 980 TI. I know it sounds like a big deal for it to run well on a so-called midrange card, but if they wanted to do that they'd need to try it out on a GTX 950 or 960.

    If I were the dictator of "video card performance nomenclature," it would be more like this:

    GTX 950 - Midrange
    GTX 960 - Upper Midrange
    GTX 970 - Entry level High End
    GTX 980 - High End
    GTX 980ti - Cost No Object.

    If a video card costs about what the average person spends on a whole computer these days, the phrase "midrange" does not get to be associated with it.