We already knew that Gears of War developer The Coalition was the first triple-A studio to switch to Epic’s brand new UE5, keeping with the franchise tradition. However, Technical Art Director Colin Penty has now revealed that the studio is preparing to showcase an Unreal Engine 5 tech demo running on Xbox Series X hardware at the upcoming Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2021.
Super excited to be presenting for @CoalitionGears at #GDC a #UE5 technical demo #AlphaPoint presented by @UnrealEngine running on #XboxSeriesX with @Kate_JRayner 🔥🔥🔥https://t.co/kBAKg2dXFc
— Colin Penty (@colinpenty) July 2, 2021
The remote session will take place on Tuesday, July 20th, between 1:20 pm and 2:20 pm Pacific Time. Colin Penty himself and Technical Director Kate Rayner will be presenting it.
The Coalition will debut a UE5 Technical Demo “Alpha Point” on Xbox Series X, created to internally evaluate UE5. The talk will cover the learnings the team had while creating Nanite-resolution assets and incorporating them into a fully real-time lighting scenario with Lumen and Virtual Shadow Maps. Performance and memory observations will be covered for Xbox Series X and S, as well as VFX, Blueprint, material setup, Temporal Super Resolution, and Virtual Texture findings. The Coalition will also cover some preliminary findings on next-gen character creation and MetaHumans integration, demoing a next-generation character test running on Xbox Series X.
Takeaway
Attendees will learn more about the inner workings of UE5’s new visual systems. They will learn viable workflows that have been proven in a technical demo for UE5 including Nanite, Lumen, Megascans, and MetaHumans.
Intended Audience
Unreal Engine licensees or anyone interested in getting a sneak peek at next-gen game workflows and visuals.
Truth to be told, it won’t be the first UE5 Xbox Series X tech demo we see, given that Epic chose Microsoft’s next-generation console to fully demonstrate the engine’s capabilities back in May. That said, Gears fans will undoubtedly be eager to see what the talented developers at The Coalition can do with the Unreal Engine 5, and we’ll be happy to report on it. Stay tuned!
