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 Samaritan UE3 demo, the Blade Runner franchise, and the broader Cyberpunk  2077 aesthetic. 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).

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 absent are advanced features such as Lumen, Path Tracing, RTX, DLSS, or baked lighting—this highlights what UE5 can achieve even without leveraging its most sophisticated tools.

While the rain effect appears somewhat artificial, the rendering of wet surfaces is impressively detailed, adding depth to the urban environment. However, the demo suffers from frequent invisible walls, which detract from the overall immersion. Although Unreal Engine 5 tech demos consistently deliver visually stunning experiences, games built on the engine often struggle with performance issues when implemented in real-world scenarios. 

Main image: youtube.com

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