Matrix: Awakening is an unmissable next-gen experience
Matrix
After teasing us with a surprise pre-load earlier in the week, Matrix: The Awakening - An Experience on Unreal Engine 5 has finally unlocked. Available for Xbox Series X | S and PlayStation 5, this is the most ambitious UE5 tech demo we've seen so far (and it's also the first chance we've had to get a feel for this cutting-edge rendering technology on consoles). Digital Foundry had unlimited access to the experience for a few days, along with the opportunity to have an in-depth discussion with some of Epic's key figures. We'll be sharing more information soon, but for now, here's an overview of what the experience offers, some initial impressions, what's new in UE5, and what it looks like on new machines from Sony and Microsoft.First of all, the experience is divided into three separate and distinct sections. The former is something of a showcase for characters, with Epic creating stunning digital models of Keanu Reeves (Neo) and Carrie-Anne Moss (Trinity), both in the current version and in the original Matrix trilogy. What we're seeing in these opening scenes is a fascinating blend of standard assets and characters rendered completely in real time - it was quite fascinating for us at Digital Foundry to try and determine which ones they were! The impressive technology of Epic, MetaHuman was used to recreate the likeness of Reeves and Moss, digitally scanning them and reconstructing them in the virtual environment with the software that takes care of autonomously managing the animations.
The character showcase subsequently gives way to a fully playable, if somewhat linear, action sequence that introduces the player character - I - created by the standard MetaHuman program. It was intriguing to see how a completely "synthetic" character, created thanks to the MetaHuman system, interacted with such iconic and recognizable figures. Remarkably good, actually. After a short sequence in which we see Neo fly away leaving Trinity behind the wheel, we are put to the test with a Virtua Cop-style shooting gallery, with a truly breathtaking graphic rendering. This is a freeway shooting reminiscent of The Matrix Reloaded, with the exception that, this time, you actively participate in the action. The fidelity of the city streets is of a level never seen before, with the PS5 and Xbox Series X rendering at a quality comparable to that of Blu-rays.
At this point, what is important to understand is that although what you are seeing is a linear set-piece, it is taking place in a fully realized open world. Not only that: while the flipping car explosions may seem quite similar from one "bang" to the next, it's all calculated in real time using Epic's physical Chaos system, with the action changing from one run to the next. other, even if you put very, very similar inputs into the game. All we can tell you is that if you have compatible hardware, you should definitely try it out and see for yourself. There is also a rather spectacular ending but, notably, this is not the end of the demo.
The third portion of the demo places IO within the open world itself and allows players to roam the city as you wish: walking, running or commandeering vehicles. There is also the option to switch to a debug camera, to better view the full extent of the world provided by the Epic team. It is rendered using Nanite, Epic's pioneering state of the art system for UE5, which essentially promises infinite levels of detail without any pop-in phenomena. Beyond that, for Epic engineers, this demo served to demonstrate several concepts. The previous demos, Lumen in the Land of Nanite and Valley of the Ancient, looked spectacular but were built on somewhat static environments. Matrix: Awakening, on the other hand, is all about creating a dense urban landscape, full of traffic and pedestrians (the density in terms of cars and NPCs and the position of the Sun can be changed in the debug menus).
Obviously, Nanite is supported by Lumen, Unreal Engine 5's unique real-time global lighting system, but Matrix: Awakening sees Lumen taken to the next level, with truly jaw-dropping performance and incredible lighting fidelity. indirect and diffuse guaranteed by the ray-tracing hardware accelerated by the new consoles that can also offer ray-traced reflections and an unprecedented shading. These systems are extraordinarily expensive, in terms of performance, which means that Epic relies heavily on its TSR (Temporal Super Resolution) solution which uses data from previous frames to process those currently being rendered, in order to improve the overall quality. . A really nice touch in the demo can be seen after the chase scene, where the action pauses for a series of scenes that show exactly how Nanite technology works, the daily cycle, super time resolution and mass AI systems. .
Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Here is an extensive comparison gallery between the various versions of the demo, running on all three current-gen consoles. Part of the goal behind this demo is the precise will to point out that large and realistic open worlds can be generated by a relatively small team thanks to some impressive procedural generation systems. In fact, Epic has included these stats in their press release, which apply to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X versions of the demo.
The city is 4,138km wide and 4,968km long, slightly larger than downtown. Los Angeles The area of the city measures 15.79 km 2 The perimeter of the city is 14,519 km long There are 260 km of roads in the city There are 512 km of sidewalks in the city There are 1,248 intersections in the city There are 45,073 cars parked, of which 38,146 are drivable and destructible There are 17,000 simulated traffic vehicles on the road that are destructible There are 7,000 buildings There are 27,848 lampposts on the side of the road alone There are 12,422 manholes Nearly 10 million unique objects have been created to reproduce the city L he whole world is illuminated only by the sun, the sky and the materials on which the meshes are applied. No light source was placed for the tens of thousands of street lamps and lighthouses. In night mode, almost all the lighting comes from the millions of emissive windows of the buildings. There are 35,000 pedestrians simulated using MetaHuman Average polygon count? 7,000,000 models made up of miles of different assets, each of which could consist of millions of polygons. The buildings in the city alone required the use of several billion polygons. Importantly, Matrix: Awakening is not a complete game, nor will it ever be, as far as we know. This is a test demo designed to show how close Unreal Engine 5's cutting-edge systems are to photorealism and to reiterate, once and for all, that these systems are capable of running on the current generation of Sony and Microsoft consoles. , albeit with a limit of 30 frames per second. If the performance may seem a bit inconsistent, it is because the entire character rendering demonstration at the beginning and the cutscene with the shooting and chase are all rendered in "cinematic" 24 frames per second.
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The impression of uncertainty is due to frame-pacing which does not match the way movies are played on a 60Hz screen when watching them at home . There may be performance drops elsewhere too but, at this point, it's worth remembering that while Matrix: The Awakening is a public and accessible code, it's not a fully optimized game (and indeed, it was created by a team relatively small). It's the same team responsible for previous UE5 demos, including the Reflections demo with Star Wars stormtroopers that Nvidia used to introduce us to hardware-accelerated ray tracing.
Matrix: Awakening is an absolutely experience indispensable, especially because it silences the idea that the current generation of consoles cannot offer a generational leap compared to its predecessors, an impression that many have after a year of cross-gen titles in which the main advantages of the new consoles are been the increase in resolution, frame-rate and detail, as well as some ray tracing features. This is a vision of the future of video games and it's amazing to see - the fact that Nanite works well on consoles and can be combined with ray tracing features is frankly impressive. And it's also impressive what Epic plans to do with this demo. The entire open world project with all its assets will be distributed to Unreal Engine 5 users to experiment as they wish.
