Unreal Engine 5.5 Demo Unveils Cyberpunk Future

An innovative new tech demo, powered by Unreal Engine 5.5.3, has been released, offering players a captivating walkthrough of a futuristic cyberpunk city. This project, developed by the talented artist Sciontidesign, draws its inspiration from the iconic Samaritan UE3 demo, the visually striking Blade Runner franchise, and the immersive world of Cyberpunk 2077. The demo was showcased on high-end hardware, including an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU, an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM operating at 6000MHz.

This technical demonstration relies exclusively on dynamic lighting, showcasing the impressive capabilities of Nanite with Distance Field Meshes and Ambient Occlusion, enhanced by Screen Space Reflections. Notably, it does not utilize advanced features such as Lumen, Path Tracing, RTX, DLSS, or baked lighting. This approach highlights what Unreal Engine 5 can achieve even without its most sophisticated tools.

While the rain effect in the demo may appear somewhat artificial, the rendering of wet surfaces is exceptionally detailed, adding significant depth to the urban environment. However, the demo is marred by frequent invisible walls, which detract from the overall immersive experience. Although Unreal Engine 5 tech demos consistently deliver visually stunning experiences, games built on the engine often face performance challenges when implemented in real-world scenarios.