Developer outs stunning Unreal 5 tech demo running on the GeForce RTX 3070, highlighting what next-gen exclusive visuals could shape up to be on PS5 and Xbox Series S/X

Developer Melhem Sfeir, who previously showed off the potential of Unreal 5's Nanite geometry culling system, recently dropped a new UE5 demo on YouTube. The new demo is a quick walk through a 3D-scanned rural town from Sketchfab, but enhanced immeasurably by Unreal 5's Lumen lighting system with hardware ray-tracing. 

In response to an NBC enquiry, Sfeir clarified that his "Metaverse" demo was running on enthusiast-class current gen hardware, on a system with a GeForce RTX 3070 and 32GB of RAM. "Metaverse" runs at 80-90 FPS at 1440p, albeit with DLSS turned on. 

The developer chalked up the demo's visuals and performance to a combination of Lumen and Nanite, the core rendering technologies at the heart of Unreal Engine 5. Lumen delivers global illumination and reflections, both enhanced on cards like the RTX 3070 that support hardware ray tracing. Nanite, on the other hand, utilizes a next-gen culling solution that essentially removes the need to reduce polygon counts on high-poly 3D scans or to rely on low quality LOD meshes. The results in "Metaverse" speak for themselves. 

"We should definitely start seeing some PS5 games coming soon with these kind of graphics," Sfeir told NBC, raising the possibility that photorealistic video game visuals might be just a couple years away. 

Check out the GeForce RTX 3070 here on Amazon.