An innovative new tech demo powered by Unreal Engine 5.5.3 has been released, offering players an immersive walkthrough of a futuristic cyberpunk city. Developed by artist Sciontidesign, this project draws inspiration from the iconic Samaritan UE3 demo, the atmospheric Blade Runner franchise, and the visually striking aesthetic of Cyberpunk 2077. The demo was showcased running on high-end hardware, featuring an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU, AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM (6000MHz), highlighting the pinnacle of current technology.
This technical demonstration relies solely on dynamic lighting, showcasing the capabilities of Nanite with Distance Field Meshes and Ambient Occlusion combined with Screen Space Reflections. Notably, it does not use advanced features such as Lumen, Path Tracing, RTX, DLSS, or baked lighting—demonstrating the impressive potential of UE5 even without its most sophisticated tools.
While the rain effect may appear somewhat artificial, the rendering of wet surfaces is impressively detailed, adding significant depth to the urban environment. However, the demo is not without its flaws, as it suffers from frequent invisible walls that can detract from the overall immersion. Although Unreal Engine 5 tech demos consistently deliver visually stunning experiences, games built on the engine often face performance challenges when implemented in real-world scenarios.
