Large Open-World Kid Kite Demo

[reok]

The complete UE4 Kite demo is coming along with 4.8. We might be able to release some of the content from the demo sooner. Stay tuned for news.

Omg, that's truly amazing. Thank you, TIM! ))

[Alexander Paschall]

Omg, that's truly amazing. Thank you, TIM! ))

I remember when someone was asking me earlier if Tim Sweeney really comes on to post. Oh yeah, that was really him

[ChrisTm]

Remember when you asked earlier if Tim Sweeney really comes on to post? Oh yeah, that was really him

Thank you Alexander to raise doubts about if Tim Sweeney really comes on to post
It's possible , sometime we see him take part in discussions on polycount.
Now , it's strange that the big man talk about small detail like this here .

I am joking

[SonKim]

I heard this demo ran on the new Titan X, at 30 fps....my poor GTX 680 would die running this demo at 2560 X 1600(native resolution) :P

[ChrisTm]

I heard this demo ran on the new Titan X, at 30 fps....my poor GTX 680 would die running this demo at 2560 X 1600(native resolution) :P

Seriously ? i don't see anything about it , but I am really surprised that Unreal Engine work only at 30fps with Titan X 12go ? Unreal Engine is really optimized .
I don't think that is true but i don't know . If someone in the staff can confirmed it .

[Alexander Paschall]

Seriously ? i don't see anything about it , but I am really surprised that Unreal Engine work only at 30fps with Titan X 12go ? Unreal Engine is really optimized .
I don't think that is true but i don't know . If someone in the staff can confirmed it .

Hello, that is mostly correct. There is major note that must be made though: It was not pre-rendered, it was rendered in real-time. That is basically representative of what you could get with in-game graphics using UE4 and the Titan. I think of the Kite demo as a look into the near future of what graphics could be like in-game.

EDIT: Here are more technical details: http://www.twitch.tv/unrealengine/b/632598238 Skip to 45 mins in.

[ChrisTm]

Hello, that is mostly correct. There is major note that must be made though: It was not pre-rendered, it was rendered in real-time. That is basically representative of what you could get with in-game graphics using UE4 and the Titan. I think of the Kite demo as a look into the near future of what graphics could be like in-game.

EDIT: Here are more technical details: http://www.twitch.tv/unrealengine/b/632598238 Skip to 45 mins in.

Wow , it's impressive , Caracter animation is really impressive too , maybe you know how much keyframe of the caracter animation you needed ?

Thank you

[John Alcatraz]

What is taking so much time to render? Is it the massive amount of foliage or the DFGI? I think the kite demo looks good, but it's nothing "special". It's not really "the future of graphics". It's what the Cryengine could do all the time, and it seems with much better fps... You probably can compare the kite demo with Crysis 1... Of course the demo looks a bit better since the textures are higher resolution and the foliage has more polys, but as a rough comparison crysis 1 works.





For example kite demo has a really low grass render distance...

So really, what's the bottleneck at the moment? You said you improved the performance with much foliage a lot, so probably this isn't the problem. But I also can't imagine that one-bounce Distance Field GI is taking so much performance.

[fighter5347]

What is taking so much time to render?

In my opinion the main parts are

-the size -> 256 km2
-dynamic light and gi
-the high quality meshes (e.g the cliffs,...) -> complex shaders, high res textures,...
-AO
-soft shadows

Btw, make sure to check out some other videos like the UE4 feature trailer >(e.g the scene at 0:40) or the twich stream -> there you can really see how good it looks like (in my opinion crysis is nothing against this demo -> but kingdom come deliverance would be a good example for an open world project made with the cryeninge, but there the grass render distance is also pretty low )

@Alex, is there probably a way that we can get some high resolution screenshots?

[ChrisTm]

Absolutely, I vote for Unreal Engine, look really better.

[John Alcatraz]

Of course Unreal Engine looks better than crysis 1 since crysis 1 is 8 years old. But for example as you see in the screenshot in crysis 1 you already had light going through leaves what UE4 can do since 1 month.
And in the kite demo you never really see more far than 3km so the Engine does not have to render more than ~3km x 3km = 9km² at once. I think 30fps on a Titan X or 20 fps on a GTX 780 is really way too bad optimized for the graphics we see. It should run with something like 60 fps on a GTX 780. All the trees in the distance have like 16 or 32 polys, you can only see grass in a radius of ~30m, there are almost no dynamic objects, no volumetric clouds (CryEngine can do this since very long time), only limited GI, and so on.

[fighter5347]

Of course Unreal Engine looks better than crysis 1 since crysis 1 is 8 years old. But for example as you see in the screenshot in crysis 1 you already had light going through leaves what UE4 can do since 1 month.

Before the new foilage shading you did it with SSS which was available in the UE4 since the first days (even in UDK it was already implemented)
Take a look at some scenes from the twich stream -> there are views that are far over 3 km

But I would say that we can just discuss about this demo when we have seen more videos/screenshots or when we have tested it in the engine

[ChrisTm]

i think that titan X 12go is relatively recent, probably with bad driver as Nvidia know making for every new card .. Wait and see better optimized driver.

[DotCam]

Of course Unreal Engine looks better than crysis 1 since crysis 1 is 8 years old. But for example as you see in the screenshot in crysis 1 you already had light going through leaves what UE4 can do since 1 month.
And in the kite demo you never really see more far than 3km so the Engine does not have to render more than ~3km x 3km = 9km² at once. I think 30fps on a Titan X or 20 fps on a GTX 780 is really way too bad optimized for the graphics we see. It should run with something like 60 fps on a GTX 780. All the trees in the distance have like 16 or 32 polys, you can only see grass in a radius of ~30m, there are almost no dynamic objects, no volumetric clouds (CryEngine can do this since very long time), only limited GI, and so on.

There is a huge difference between a tech demo and a game, and this tech demo was going for max quality at max distance. Every rock and tree was 3d photoscanned to create both the meshes and the high res textures, which is something that has not really been used in any realtime game with dynamic lighting so far. Some other features that contribute to performance are:

- DFAO
- Dynamic GI using Heightfields (coming in 4.8)
- Ray-Traced Distance Field Soft Shadows (4.8)
- the new 2 sided foliage shader (4.7)
- A new kind of motion blur (4.8)
- SSR for translucency (4.8)

And possibly even more we aren't already aware of. The Dynamic GI alone is likely the single most performance hungry feature in the demo.

On top of all that this demo was meant to push the hardware to the max, meaning there are likely quite a few performance optimizations that could be used but weren't since the frame rate was within their target FPS for the demo.

Until we get our hands on the project it will be difficult to know what was done and why, and how it can be improved. I personally have no doubt they will release the demo with performance optimizations. After all there is only one person with a Titan X so far, I highly doubt it will be required to use the demo.

[FrankieV]

I remember when someone was asking me earlier if Tim Sweeney really comes on to post. Oh yeah, that was really him

Well he needs to change his badge to "Like A Boss"