The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience | Download now!

General Announcements
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Hey folks!

The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is now available to download for free on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, created in collaboration with teams across both Epic Games and partners, such as SideFX, Evil Eye Pictures, The Coalition, WetaFX (formerly Weta Digital), and many others.

This boundary-pushing technical demo is an original concept set within the world of Warner Bros’ The Matrix. Written and cinematically directed by Lana Wachowski, it features Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss reprising their roles as Neo and Trinity and—in a reality-flipping twist—also playing themselves.

We’ve built a vast, 16 kilometers square open world city, comprised of 7,000 buildings made of thousands of modular pieces, each of those constructed of millions of triangles and enhanced with props, signage, debris, and more. There are 1,248 simulated intersections, 45,073 parked cars (of which 38,146 are drivable), over 260 km of roads, and 512 km of sidewalk.

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The interactive experience is packed with believable characters and drivable vehicles. You can explore the city on foot, hop in a vehicle, or fly around with a drone’s-eye view. Adjust the lighting in the experience by moving the sun to any angle and seeing the effect instantly, all because Lumen renders in real time. There’s even an experimental night mode hidden in the experience for you to discover.

To learn more about how UE5 technologies such as Nanite, Lumen, Chaos, and more were leveraged to build the reality-bending experience, head over to the Unreal Engine feed.

And download The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience for yourself on either PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S.

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The real question we all want answered is, will you be releasing the assets for this at any point haha.

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No, the real real question is will you be releasing the project at any point? That would be mighty fine.

Also, why consoles and not PC?

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Guess I don’t need to make a thread about since we already talk about the big elephant in the room.

Trust me, there is no rant from my side! I am just curious and would love to dive deeper into that Matrix experience and not just looking at: “Look at what you will never be able to achieve because insert reasons here”

You released an EA for UE5, the UE 5.0 Github version seems to walk between non and fully usable.
So I wonder about a couple of things:

a) On what UE5 version the Matrix guys were able to work on since I don’t think it was EA2 [or how did they managed to use Chaos, Houdini HDA’s and overall everything that I am not sure it works flawless for a production at this scope]. Enlighten us!

b) Yes. Why not PC. Afraid we would take the demo apart and dissect it into pieces like a frog in bio-class. Of course we would do that. ;D

c) Talking about frogs… Is something planned for PC? Or would we get some more info to learn how that team managed to do something in a couple of …weeks …months that Cyberpunk 2077 was not being able in like eight years of development. [I know, that is an unfair comparison but also raised the question in me how long a single developer, small or bigger team would need to do a game based on the scope of this demo, plus probably more gameplay to call it a game]

There are so many questions in my head.

Bonus question to the team behind, if you read the forums: Would you actually share knowledge about certain things? I am part-time working on a little city project and wonder how you would manage to build junctions in Houdini for example. As an environment artist, your demo will give me sleepless nights for sure now.

Ok one last thing: You literally wrote about a walk & drive city simulator. Could we see more? Yes, it is literally torture for people who can’t get hands on any of the new consoles which are simply not available (at least not in Germany). I am a Matrix fan since the first hour in cinema, watched the premiere back in the days - And now, see me sitting here. I wish there would be a glitch in the Matrix, a door opens and I could work on a full scale Matrix game. And all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

Kind regards,
̶t̶̶h̶̶o̶̶m̶̶a̶̶s̶̶ ̶̶a̶̶.̶̶ ̶̶a̶̶n̶̶d̶̶e̶̶r̶̶s̶̶o̶̶n̶
Kaji

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Watching the demo on YT and not having project or at least demo for PC is torture.

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Like a lot of users I, too, would like to see this available for PC…

In case it has escaped Epicgames, a lot of people can’t even get an Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5 to test it on, no thanks to scalpers. There is, of course, the Series S console, but the performance just isn’t the same vs the higher spec’s processor.

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Release the project files pleaseeee it looks amazing :stuck_out_tongue:

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“True Next-Gen”… simply unbelievable,… and no,… the real, real, real question is: How long till end of Early Access? :nerd_face:

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i wanna play it on pc.

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Hey @Amanda.Schade !

At some point last night furing the awards ceremony (so overwhelming… it all blurred together thru my tears of joy :joy:) I seem to recall hearing that Epic intended to release the Awaken tech demo project “at some point”.

Or was I just hallucinating from an ultra-vivid eye-candy overload?

Could the Epic Gods™ clarify if / when we might see such a beast emerge from our network jack to haunt our every waking moment with it’s overwhelming glory?

Or is Keanu Reeves just too concerned about becoming a sex-puppet in some VR pr-n without his agent getting their cut?? (For those who don’t get it, see the Verge interview)

Oh well, it was worth a shot. searching for salt & lime

[@Tim.Sweeney are you lurking out there? We miss you!]

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I have never even considered uninstalling Ureal engine or the epic games launcher until this moment. It blows my mind that an intellectual property built on the possible future of living in a computer simulation would not allow you to experience it’s content on a computer. Did Neo do his hacking on his playstation console? Did trinity contact him through his xbox live account? This corporate gatekeeping behaviour is what I would expect from the machines. So disappointed in everyone involved. I will not be watching a youtube video of something actively excluding me and every other PC user.

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I just read that we may get hands on the project itself. For sure that console demo was probably a marketing stunt for all, Epic, Microsoft and Sony in one breath at the Game Awards.

But after reading that article here: The Matrix Awakens is an unmissable next-gen showcase • Eurogamer.net it gives me a feeling that Epic cares about us and we don’t need to beg for a PC version but may actually getting kicked deep into that rabbit-hole, getting more that we could ever ask for.

fingers crossed

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I don’t own a ps5 or a xbx so I watched this on youtube.
It is really amazing the visual level that videogames have reached. I think those who started gaming in the 80s understand this better. I was watching this with my sons and I was amazed. But they didn’t seem impressed at all and made comments like “the gun reloading is wrong”. Haha.
I can’t believe this is made in the same software I’m using to make my ridiculous game.

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@Limanima

lol, i had similar thoughts.

i was playing my game thinking, “this looks pretty nice” because in my head “gaming” is still all the games I played in the early 2000’s. Then I go on steam and flip through new releases and it’s like, “Oh… I’m a drop in a very big bucket.”

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PC only here. Watched the video. Trying to figure out who is real is interesting.

But I have a question about the series (only saw the first movie). Why don’t the agents just take on the form of Neo and/or Trinity? Maybe they did and I missed it? Could they do that?

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Hate to be an echo, but yeah, where is the PC version? I understand consoles need some love but is it a timed exclusive or console only?

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For those that haven’t seen it, you can watch a video of the experience on YouTube: The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience - YouTube

We do not have a dedicated PC experience planned, but will be releasing the experience as a sample project next year :slight_smile:

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fantastic.

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So sad to hear this isn’t going to be on PC, but it’s awesome to hear that the project will be released next year. Definitely looking forward to that!

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That’s super awesome! Learned so much from epic’s released projects.