How come unreal engine four and five games feel like tech demos

[Kweeb]

Unreal engine is used for graphics tech demos nowadays, they're always unoptimized stuttering messes..

Unreal engine 2 and 3 feel a lot better and seem to have better functionality...
Every single unreal engine 4 and 5 game feel the same

[Iggy Wolf]

To be fair, Unreal Engine 4 wasn't too bad. It did have some slight shader compilation issues, which was honestly, the "worst" that can be said about it. Not really any traversal stutter per say. But because it didn't have any "raytracing" going on under the hood nor special tech or software like Nanite now, it was basically treated as an extension of the DX10/11 libraries that most games ran on during that generation.

The problem with UE5 is that the games ARE basically running on "tech demos". This is stuff that used to be restricted and reserved for demo purposes, until devs could optimize and streamline it for a more general and mainstream experience. Now, they figure the "raw hardware power" of Nvidia cards and even some AMD cards can be leveraged to deliver manageable performance for that same fidelity that the demos gave.

Problem of course is that the demos were running on closed hardware with certain factors being constant. No game is ever the same nor the systems running them. Even consoles can hardly be said to be there yet. And yet Sony and Microsoft are forced to improve because publishers want to push "bigger" and "badder" graphics for a new generation.

Mind you, raytracing by itself isn't even necessarily that performance intensive these days. But it seems to work better on in-house engines like 4A Games' Metro 4A engine, Frostbite, RE Engine, and Cryengine etc. UE5 is a free engine suddenly given to a bunch of newbies and expected to deliver a AAA experience most of the time with a AA or indie dev team.

[Kweeb]

Unreal engine 3 and 2 games just feel better. I'm one of the few people that do not care about graphics.

[Original Cast Recording]

I haven't had great experiences with UE games. Hard to know how much is due to my hardware and how much is just bad optimization RE this:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Iggy Wolf:

UE5 is a free engine suddenly given to a bunch of newbies and expected to deliver a AAA experience most of the time with a AA or indie dev team.

[oldirty`]

The unreal engine used to be made for games, that it no more the case. Its used in film and television.
In architecture, product design and much more.

Same reason why Nvidia sucks these days, they are now an AI company.

[Schamyl006]

Engineering a game takes lots time, skill, effort and patience. You sure you can do it?

[oldirty`]

You think the nanite feature was made for games? ;p I dont

[Iggy Wolf]

Oprindeligt skrevet af oldirty`:

The unreal engine used to be made for games, that it no more the case. Its used in film and television.
In architecture, product design and much more.

Same reason why Nvidia sucks these days, they are now an AI company.

Which explains the "tech demo" feel. But those other things are rarely processing more than 24 or 30 frames. The engines have always had to streamline it for games though to give more acceptable performance. When UE4 tech demos were first showing off the look, people were saying how much would have to be toned to actually give a playable experience. I guess publishers and devs don't care about that anymore.

People used to say that while Crysis looked great, it was NOT an example of a game you wanted to follow or copy in terms of how to make all games going forward. That's why 2 and 3 toned down the physics and size to make them work on consoles but also because gameplay mattered more than simply looking pretty. Now it seems like we're back to glorified tech demos, with the performance that usually comes with one.

[talemore]

Because they're tech Demo.

Unreal 3 was a tech Demo as well in the past.

[Valfossa]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Schamyl006:

Engineering a game takes lots time, skill, effort and patience. You sure you can do it?

I'm sure that if I did, I wouldn't release it in the state most of these developers think is acceptable.

But I doubt I would use Unreal 5 in the first place.

[Devious]

1) The barriers to entry to game development are lower than ever. Inexperienced and self-taught game devs often employ poor practices that technically work, but utterly nuke performance as they pile up.

2) Optimization is not magic. It takes time and resources from a studio. Time and resources that might be better spent adding in more content. Therefore, once a game is believed to be within most machines' capabilities, the project lead will probably not want to optimize it further.

3) Unreal does have issues of its own, especially if you work with blueprints as opposed to C++. It's an incredibly versatile tool that comes with a lof of extraneous functions, which can significantly weigh down games.

That said, first-time devs have very few alternatives, and "making your own engine" is certainly not one of them.

[Ȼħⱥꞥꞥēł8753452]

The more and more games that make the jump to unreal, the more and more I see it's limitations.

Other in-house engines just were better at handling certain things. Unreal also has that "look" that just can't be gotten get rid of.

[Kweeb]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Ȼħⱥꞥꞥēł8753452:

The more and more games that make the jump to unreal, the more and more I see it's limitations.

Other in-house engines just were better at handling certain things. Unreal also has that "look" that just can't be gotten get rid of.

EA needs to resurrect (update it for 64 bits) renderware and license it out

[admiral1018]

The quality of devs at AAA studios is much lower than it was a decade ago due to all the DEI hiring practices that don't attract the best talent. We now get customizable options for pronouns, but games can't hit 60 FPS at max settings on top hardware.

I wish a lot of the AA and AAA studios would go back to creating their own engines. Not just because the performance would be better for those games, but because the hiring talent needed for programmers who could actually design their own engines would elevate everything else in the game.

[Kweeb]

Oprindeligt skrevet af admiral1018:

The quality of devs at AAA studios is much lower than it was a decade ago due to all the DEI hiring practices that don't attract the best talent. We now get customizable options for pronouns, but games can't hit 60 FPS at max settings on top hardware.

I wish a lot of the AA and AAA studios would go back to creating their own engines. Not just because the performance would be better for those games, but because the hiring talent needed for programmers who could actually design their own engines would elevate everything else in the game.

This is a good example. CDPR Claims The Witcher 4 Will Tackle a Woman’s Struggle in a Medieval World

[Electric Cupcake]

Source engine has always been best since the idtech family. Valve needs to promote Source 2 more.

As for Unreal, Sweeney can kiss my ass.

edit:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/01/is-2025-finally-the-real-year-of-half-life-3-confirmed/