Dr. Károly Zsolnai-Fehér walks through Unreal Engine 5.5's nine major upgrades, including Megalite for real-time textured area lights and soft shadows. The engine can now render thousands of moving light sources in real time, and the demo shows a 20,000-part digital BMW 5 Series.
October 3, 2024.
Megalite (referred to as "Megalite").
Over 1,000 light sources.
20,000 parts.
Unreal Engine, a popular game development platform, just dropped something truly insane. It is chock full of absolutely amazing features. And this is the best of them all. It is called Megalite. Then we look at this insane collection of features that are in the works. Megalites can create virtual worlds with these. Ooh, am I seeing correctly? I cannot believe it. These are textured area lights, beautifully coloring their surroundings. And my other favorite, beautiful soft shadows. Ok, we know that this takes forever as previously we needed to run a super slow light simulation for this and wait for all this nasty noise to clean up. So how long does this take? Well, this was not computed in advance. Yes, you are seeing it running in real time. That is mind blowing. Wow. Now I just need a PC that would be able to run this thing. So let's enter this shady marketplace. Perhaps they are selling Nvidia cards that have fallen off the truck. They are not easy to come by. Let's buy one. Hmm. Wait a minute. This marketplace is not shady at all. There are many beautiful lights, but something is missing. What is missing? Of course, a proper computation of shadows. And now turn it on. Yes, we got a proper shady marketplace now. I can tell. I was born in communist Hungary. Trust me. Now, the point is that there are all kinds of flickering lights, oil lamps, everything that you can imagine. So many lights. Because the artists don't have to worry about cutting lights to make the game run well. Just cram everything in there, kind of like a final exam. And there we go. Now hold on to your papers, fellow scholars, and look at how many there are. Wow. Over 1,000 light sources, each casting their own shadows onto the scene. It's like a rave, but nerdier. A complete game changer. But not only that, Unreal is also used in the movie industry. Broadcasting, product, visualization, you name it. Pair it up with their simulation engine, which is also Chef's Kiss, and you have an incredible package. These results are so beautiful, I thought my eyes are going to fall out. But seriously, what is happening? In approximately a year, they showcased Nanite for insane level geometry for games, and then lumen for realistic reflections. Two holy grails in one year. And now with mega lights, make it three. It's crazy that these moving lights are rendered in real time. And all this is free for most people. And we are not done yet. Not even close. Here are nine things that really caught my eye. One, their animation engine adapts these characters to geometry so well. You can even make a parkour simulation with it. And look at them. You don't even need to pay their insurance premiums. 2. Making deformations are now so much easier and quicker. 3. You can not only warp space, but time too for better editing of animations. 4. Character customization is now second to none. Where we go from California Beachbody to Cyberpunk to Jensen Huang apparel. And they also took care of details like tucking the pants into boots automatically. 5. I hear you say, Dr. Caroj, where are my simulations and where is the AI? Well, it is right here. Ask and you shall receive, fellow scholars. Yep, here the deformations go down to the level of individual muscles insanity. 6. Vehicles can be customized now, but don't go too crazy or ouch. 7. Remember this. This was not just a visualization, but a digital copy of the new BMW 5 Series with 20,000 parts. I would say you can even pop it open, but look. Understatement of the century. Even Optimus prime would be impressed. Wow. 8. Better motion capture support for more realistic character motion. And nine. This is one of my favorites. Normally when you create a vast virtual world for games, often no one server can deal with it alone. But now you split them up between multiple game servers. And when the players transition from one region to another, it is so seamless they don't even notice the trick. Just think about that. Goodness. So I better start cutting down on the coffee budget to buy it. I mean not the BMW, but a new PC that can run this Starbucks, the destroyer of PC budgets. Begone. Or not. I don't know. I am not from America. And if we still don't have enough, at least I can make one here with a cheap rented Lambda GPU through text to image. Ha. Checkmate. And now look. Ooooh. You haven't seen anything yet. They also have a public roadmap which is. Wow. An insane amount of things are brewing right as we speak. Just look at that. Holy mother of papers. Three of my favorites coming up are Learning agents, Yummy better day and night sequences, and then this. Oh my. And once again, all this is free for most of us fellow scholars. What a time to be alive. And if you feel inspired and you wish to run your own experiments on Nvidia GPUs, check out Lambda. Lambda is a cloud service for large scale AI projects and it is my absolute favorite. Seriously. Try it out now@lambdalabs.com papers or click the link in the description. If you use Lambda, you can run your own experiments on super powerful hardware and you also support two minute papers.
