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The Matrix Is Unreal
- Severian 5y agoOk, I was under the impression that the white room scenes were a mix of filmed and digital assets, not 100% renders. In this context it is very impressive. The later scenes are very good, but in as others put it still in that uncanny valley area. We are on the up-slope however!
- thefourthchime 5y agoThat 3d Keanu in the white room had me fooled, the hair, the skin, the clothes are bang on. I read it did "4d scanning". So am I to assume the hair and clothes motion capture are part of the scan?
- dougmwne 5y agoThe white room scenes are in fact a mix of video and real time rendering. It flips back and forth 4 times.
- mikehollinger 5y agoTech demo aside, the city model is remarkably detailed. When we went exploring different alleys and flying over buildings we couldn’t find a “forgotten” corner. Does anyone know what the asset for the city is from or will be used for? The thing is massive and seems to be bespoke art.
- dougmwne 5y agoIt is largely built from Epic’s huge library of photogrammetry assets. This is open for any dev to use.
- lindwhi 5y agoThe possibilities for the creators are endless as Unreal Engine is trying to have a demo on what amazing effects will the Unreal Engine have in the future.
- mekkkkkk 5y agoThis is super impressive and a huge leap toward photo realism. The draw distance and content streaming using nanite is nuts. Next I want to see what kind of tech demo they can make run smoothly on a mobile device at 120Hz. I.e. does the tech scale downward too? Or is there no point to it unless you require extreme scale and fidelity.
- dougmwne 5y agoI have not seen any info on this, but I did see that they are moving Fortnite to UE5. Since that game needs to run on a huge range of hardware, including on mobile, I think we can deduce that a large range of performance scaling is going to be a primary design goal of the engine.
- perryizgr8 5y agoIs there a PC version to try out? Kind of a shame it is limited to consoles.
- DaedPsyker 5y agoI think what I would like to note is the appropriateness in Unreal demonstrating this with Matrix. An engine and an film from the same era (if I remember, the the first full release of the engine was the year before the film). For the technology itself, it is incredibly impressive but more than anything and something which is hard to demonstrate with a demo, is how easy it is to actually use. Nanite models are simple to make from 3d objects, this with photogrammetry would be a dream.
- ThalesX 5y agoI believe the current CTO of Epic Games was in charge of bullet time for the first Matrix.
- adrianojlt 5y ago50 years separates that from this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiShX2pTz9A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiShX2pTz9A Fifty years! Just Half a Century! It's nothing, nada, niente, 0! compared to the scale of universe. The Idea of a simulation isn't absurd if we take this progress in consideration.
- Taniwha 5y agoAt what level of reality does it become a warcrime to turn it off?
- Arubis 5y agoIrrelevant in terms of appearances, I think? It’s not a crime to delete a captured video of a person. That discussion is more about underlaying AI, which isn’t involved in this demo.
- tejohnso 5y agoMaybe when you have actual consciousnesses hooked up to it that would die without it.
- 2bitlobster 5y ago“Actual consciousnesses” defined as…?
- ReactiveJelly 5y agoIt's still different. Humans can't be turned back on easily, and they can't be replaced once lost.
- kasperni 5y agoHere is a link to the demo on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ for those who haven't got a box PS5/Xbox
- benbristow 5y agoPlayed it on my friend's Xbox One Series X Saturday night, seriously impressive stuff - even if the framerate is a bit stuttery at times and the driving controls are awful. Disappointing to see there's no PC version (yet) although I hear it's in the works. Would love to put my RTX 3080 to the test.
- ant6n 5y agoLooks like a video game... with good graphics.
- dwighttk 5y agoMost of the time… sometimes with not so good graphics (e.g. the explosions and the characters in the car and…)
- anshumankmr 5y agoI initially was freaking out when it was really Keanu but when it switched to its CG character, I just knew it wasn’t him. Then during the action scene, the explosions were still like the quality I have seen in GTA V about 8 years ago. The cars looked fine but the way they rolled after exploding did not convince me personally. Perhaps that is why this promo is a great one for the Matrix franchise as the world of the Matrix looks very real but isn’t. The original movie Matrix has aged like fine wine and is still a perfect metaphor for today’s world. Especially with how video games have become increasingly realistic due to technologies like RTX and VR/AR apps and games,but they still don’t fool anyone that they are real. Here’s a great article I had read once which encapsulates what I am saying much better than I ever could. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/02/how-close-are-we-to-t https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/02/how-close-are-we-to-t...
- zamadatix 5y ago
- obblekk 5y agoDeepfakes might not even be relevant soon.
- dash2 5y agoMeh, these guys are still stuck in the uncanny valley. Objects are often absolutely beautiful and realistic, but interactions between objects are ridiculous. Some of this is probably just "not enough processing power", but it is also due to where the rendering bumps up against the primitive controls. For example, you have a very realistic human. But then the human walks against an object, and she does this standard video game 0 mph duck-walk. Part of the problem here is that real humans don't bash into walls. So how do you realistically represent that, when in fact it's just Johnny pressing forward on his controller?
- gentleman11 5y agoA lot of newer, fancier cg in movies and games is deep in the uncanny valley for me. I can’t watch/play for more than 15 minutes without realizing I’m in a game that doesn’t look right, it’s distracting. I suppose the tech can’t get across the valley without first passing through it
- nix23 5y agoNo they are just getting cheaper with their CGI...not better, i would bet that if someone would invest the money and time as they did in the 90-00 we would be absolutely astonished.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gmadsen 5y agowhat? Avatar is the most money ever spent making a film in history..
- forrestthewoods 5y ago> A lot of newer, fancier cg in movies and games is deep in the uncanny valley for me. There's a lot of uncanny CGI in modern movies. There's also a lot of CGI that is so perfectly realistic you have no idea it isn't real. This is usually more environmental and less characters. If the tech gets past the uncanny valley then you'll never know. This is basically true by definition. :)
- throwawaysea 5y agoI know there are companies using virtual models to showcase clothing. Is replacing actors and actresses next? In some ways I don’t mind it, and decentralizing away from celebrity culture may even be a societal good. But I feel like some experiences are better off organic. Is there any point to appreciating - as an example - ballet performed by a virtual dancer with unrealistic athleticism? Will sports matter? Should they? I am not sure how things will play out but I expect all these norms to be challenged in the next 50 years.
- mantaraygun 5y ago> decentralizing away from celebrity culture may even be a societal good. I agree, but I don't think that's likely to happen. More likely, I think, is that established celebrities start licensing out their likenesses and remain celebrities for far longer than their natural lifespans would otherwise permit. Instead of celebrities aging out and making room for new celebrities, they'll stay in the game longer, maybe indefinitely, and continue to grow their personal brand.
- Koshkin 5y agoWhatever… It’s just you’ll never be even expected to trust your own eyes anymore, unless you peer right into the real world.
- majkinetor 5y agoDefine real ...
- ReactiveJelly 5y agoThe world that seems to be the realest one, to the extent that if I try to dig any deeper I would inconvenience myself by getting put back in the mental hospital. Pragmatism dictates that, even if reality is a simulation, who cares, it's real enough for now.
- derac 5y agoVirtual celebrities are treated the same as real ones, branding is highly valuable. Check out vtubers.
- Arubis 5y agoThis writeup is unsubtle in being a puff piece. The demoed tech is very impressive! Individual stills taken from the video are pretty convincing. The motion version definitely still exhibits uncanny valley, though—lights that are too hard on flesh, tightness and sharpness where there should be softness. That I have to resort to hand-wavey descriptors is cool; they’re getting close! But crossing uncanny valley is HARD. What this demo convinces me of is not that we’re there; we are not. Claiming that we are is disingenuous, and makes me distrust the claimant. But it makes apparent that we will get there. And that’s impressive.
- nwienert 5y agoI’d argue the opposite - it’s been clear since the early aughts we’d get there. What’s impressive about this demo is specifically the leap it makes towards that. I wouldn’t have expected real-time graphics on consoles to be this close for another generation.
- xwolfi 5y agoCareful, real time demos have been made before and have turned out to be anything but. I d wait until it s in my hand and I touch the tv trying to open the window for Keanu before I get excited :D
- Jensson 5y agoLots of people have played with those graphics in real time. There are some tricks behind it, like they put a whole games worth of asset weight into a tiny demo, but the demos they run are still fully playable.
- acomjean 5y agoIt the demo video (play through) they say it was rendered in real time right at the beginning. Also down in the corner which console its being rendered on,shows up from time to time. so I’m assuming it’s not faked. It looks quite good. Not reality but the cityscape is pretty close.. The fun part is the end where they show the some of the secret sauce of how it was rendered. https://youtu.be/WU0gvPcc3jQ https://youtu.be/WU0gvPcc3jQ
- twobitshifter 5y agoIt’s notable that they mention the problems de-aging Keanu which really contrasts to the “Keanu is immortal” meme from a few years back. I guess age finally caught up to him.
- strictnein 5y agoGray hair is finally showing up with the beard, which definitely ages him.
- d--b 5y agoWell since the PS4, poor animation has been a way bigger problem than rendering...
- zokier 5y agoI think the demo could have been more effective if the non-realtime elements were indicated more clearly; as-is people got confused what was realtime and what was just pre-recorded. I suppose that was kinda the point, but without any sort of reveal the effect gets lost. I don't know if the console demo had the option to switch to "nanite view" at any point, or just in the "gameplay" section, if it does then I guess that would help with the situation.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- draw_down 5y agoIt’s interesting that there is apparently no effort to render or generate voice/audio, only optics.
- beebeepka 5y agoI spent 30 minutes watching YouTube footage with my wife yesterday. It is absolutely incredible. I suspect they used this technology to make the movie, or parts of it. Why else would this be made?
- samstave 5y agoPlease link to some of the vids you recommend?
- beebeepka 5y agoI think any random video would do
- lemoncookiechip 5y agoUnreal Engine and Unity Engine are both being used in filmmaking these days. So it's very likely. For example: UE was used a lot for The Mandalorian (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/the-mandalorian-was-shot-on-a-holodeck-esque-set-with-unreal-engine-video-shows/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/the-mandalorian-was-s...).
- benbristow 5y agoFun fact - LazyTown, the meme-able (You are a pirate/We are number 1) kids TV show from Iceland used Unreal Engine 3 to generate the backdrops. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LazyTown#History_and_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LazyTown#History_and_productio...
- m3kw9 5y agoThe faces especially Trinity looks underwhelming, comparing to real life. Like a big gap. I’ve seen better facial expressions I.e Last of Us 2 but with inferior graphics.
- bee_rider 5y agoThe animation on their faces does look a little off -- I wonder if the higher quality models means they need to do even better on the animation to stay out of the uncanny valley.
- ReactiveJelly 5y agoRe: TLoU2, maybe it's easier to create a completely original character and make them convincing, than to match a very well-known actor?
- doener 5y agoSee also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29533550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29533550
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- temptemptemp111 5y agoKeanu is trans. You heard it here first!
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y agoKeanu looked insanely good at the beginning of the white room scene, but then I realized it was real footage when they switched to the uncanny-valley-esque version at 1:41… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ
- crehn 5y agoThe article seems to suggest that's all real-time rendering though?
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y agoEven the scene from the original Matrix shown on the TV?
- 6nf 5y agoThis is the actual movie 'wake up neo' scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjoad6gcRzs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjoad6gcRzs
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y agoI’m talking about what’s shown on the CRT TV in the white room.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kingcharles 5y agoRight. The team behind this is being a bit dicey with the truth. They never seem to be clear which parts are CG and which are video. Any time Keanu looks goofy, that's CG. It looks hand-animated to me because the movement is so terribly poor. Mo-cap to me is still shitty (see e.g. Thanos in Avengers), but hand-animated is always uncanny.
- Mountain_Skies 5y agoReal time de-ageing + Zoom + remote job = less age discrimination. Have it randomize other characteristics during job interviews to remove other forms of discrimination too.
- charcircuit 5y agoYou can opt to use no web cam or a virtual webcam with a victor avatar already. There's no need to "deage" yourself when you can be a cute anime cat girl.
- charcircuit 5y agovictor -> virtual
- pm90 5y agoWe need very strong privacy restrictions. No sharing of personal pictures without express consent. Basically every human being can choose which persona to expose in different situations and the links between them should only be evident to them (and their lawful delegates).
- cercatrova 5y agoOr just make it audio only. Hell, some companies are using writing samples to decide to hire, such as Gumroad I believe. I think that's good because you get to take your time and there's significantly less bias than with video and audio.
- odiroot 5y agoA Scanner Darkly future is coming!
- dougmwne 5y agoThe people trying to point out that this falls short of photorealism are missing the point. This is a tech demo aiming to show off the next generation leap unreal engine 5 is making. There’s lots to be impressed about here and this was made using a ton of procedural generation using a team of just about 70 people. Here’s a great deep dive into some of the new technologies that highlights the strengths and weaknesses of some of the new engine tools: https://youtu.be/ib6_c6uliLg https://youtu.be/ib6_c6uliLg This is extremely exciting this is possible on a year old console and not a 3090.
- dave_sullivan 5y agoThe HN crowd's interest response has been so deadened by constant dopamine flow that they simply cannot be entertained anymore. "Meh" is the maximum level of emotional response that can be elicited. The invention of literal time travel, the invention of AGI, or the manufacture of a black hole as an energy source would all be met with mehs. Just a bunch of people dead inside. I still come here for the links and the 5% of comments that are insightful and not pedantic.
- andrepd 5y agoAre you implying AGI and time travel is at the same level as improved computer graphics?
- imwillofficial 5y agoNo, it was saying that even a fantastic invention would fail to garner enthusiasm.
- glitcher 5y agoI would caution against forming judgement on an entire population based on the loudest minority within them. In my experience there seem to be many more reasonable, restrained, and quiet folk out there. Now if the signal to noise ratio in the comments here is trending towards more noise for you, then by all means the comments are less useful and may not be worth the time at some point. But don't confuse the loud cynical voices as being representative for all of us.
- lai-yin 5y agoThe rendered actors look so close to reality but at the same time so obviously artificial...something is just off the mark. How would a cgi expert put it into words?
- nazgulnarsil 5y agoA lot of it is soft light scattering. Skin is semi translucent and that is really expensive to try to simulate.
- benbristow 5y agoNot a CGI expert (although I can make a good looking cube in Blender). "Uncanny valley" is the usual term - https://spectrum.ieee.org/what-is-the-uncanny-valley https://spectrum.ieee.org/what-is-the-uncanny-valley
- Gigachad 5y agoI can see what you mean. But at the same time, if I wasn't aware this was fake, I could watch a whole video like this without being tipped off that it's entirely rendered.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- tim-- 5y agoA better link might be the press release from Unreal themselves [1]. The Verge also did an interview with Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss on the process of creating the demo which is quite interesting to watch, too [2]. [1] https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/introducing-the-matrix-awakens-an-unreal-engine-5-experience https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/introducing-the-matr... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OK80eljWrs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OK80eljWrs
- pxc 5y agoDoes anyone else kinda feel like videogames look good enough at this point? This demo looks fantastic, but I don't think many visual improvements beyond it seem super exciting to me. I'll take them when they come, of course, and I'm sure that realistic 3D worlds in videogames will continue to look better and better as time goes on. But I dunno. I hope advances in videogame engines do more than just help the biggest AAA titles improve their photorealism. What do we get as the technology improves beyond the point shown in this demo? Just better graphics, or a democratization of the production of photorealistic games? Does this somehow open the door for smaller teams to create games that involve photorealism, or for more budget and staffing resources in the development of photorealistic games to be directed toward other aspects of the game?
- jerf 5y agoThat was actually my first reaction when I saw this video. The graphics are incredible, sure. The people don't entirely escape uncanny valley, but they partially do, and everything else looks awesome. No question. Then we get to the game portion of the demo, and... it's a half-step above a quicktime event. Now, look, yes, I get it, this isn't actually a game, and the game is an afterthought and not the main point. (By that, I mean the game itself, not the cars, not the agents jumping around, but just the underlying mechanics.) Still, consider where we've come from. Think Atari 2600 graphics and the sheer staggering number of orders of magnitude improvement in the graphics since then. Even if they did have tons of people working on this, all those people were working at levels of efficiency undreamed of in the 2600 era, by almost any objective measure you can imagine. (Even though we'd never be able to agree on one.) Yet the game itself used in this demo is basically something you could fit on the 2600. I mean, the game itself, the mechanics. Obviously not the graphics, or even a facsimile thereof, but just the game's mechanics. It's still "point at the thing you want to blow up". No generalized conversation engine. No generalized music engine. If you'd like to be generous, call it an order of magnitude better than the 2600 could handle. The gulf between the graphics and the games we have with them keep getting larger and larger, and it doesn't help that in a lot of ways the AAA games have been boxed into what the engines do. It's not just that "open world sandboxy combat" is the only game they want to make... it's that these huge amazing engines almost require that sort of game, because that's what the engines do. The sameyness of AAA games is forced by this graphics focus because trying to do provide anything but the simplest game mechanics with this level of graphics is impossible. Which is why I've basically abandoned AAA and go indie now. The lower graphics capability turns out to be a positive advantage, because it means they can make games that aren't The AAA Engine Game.
- Exendroinient 5y agoThe most impressive thing is the scale of the city and amount of traffic. In other games you feel that buildings are way too small and every object is placed by hand for convenience to a player. This tech demo nailed the feeling of a livable metropolis.
- bglusman 5y agoSince I didn’t see it elsewhere, here’s a link to the actual video being discussed: https://youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ https://youtube.com/watch?v=WU0gvPcc3jQ
- miralabs 5y agoI just watched YongYea on youtube showing the Tech Demo on PS5 and I was in awe. Being a PS user for a long time the graphics of this is amazing. I can't wait till this kind of graphics hit the VR space. So much cool stuff is going to be happening in terms of games and how we perceived reality.
- pipeline_peak 5y agoMatrix and Vector are also characters in Unreal Tournament 1
- tumidpandora 5y agoThe car chase sequence, lighting, textures, level of detail, world building are simply amazing (as played on PS5)
- KronisLV 5y ago> The technical demo also puts previously showcased UE5 features Nanite and Lumen on display. After the interactive chase sequence, users can roam the dense, open-world city environment using UE5’s virtualized micro polygon geometry system which provides a massive seven thousand buildings made of thousands of modular pieces, 45,073 parked cars (of which 38,146 are drivable), over 260 km of roads, 512 km of the sidewalk, 1,248 intersections, 27,848 lamp posts, and 12,422 manholes in a virtual world that is slightly larger than the real downtown LA. Additionally, as one drives or walks around the city, you can pass 35,000 metahumans going about their everyday business. That is some amazing tech! It actually feels like Unreal Engine would be really well suited for other genres of games, not just the historically prevalent FPSes, such as creating RTS games or maybe even something like Cities: Skylines, in which being able to create large detailed urban environments could be amazing!
- Copenjin 5y agoI wonder if one day there will be companies that will just sell iper realistic models of complete cities or popular zone to be used in games or other kind of applications. Like companies such as Tele Atlas did back in the days for map data (when they didn't have much more than that I guess).
- ErneX 5y agoThere are already, and Epic has acquired multiple companies in that segment. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-11-12-epic-acquires-megascans-creator-quixel https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-11-12-epic-acqui... Edit: well not of entire cities, more about 3D assets. The city itself was built procedurally using Houdini.
- numlock86 5y agoIt's just a (playable) tech demo, alright. We'll have to wait 7 to 10 years until we get games close to this anyway. Remember the "Samaritan" UE3 tech demo? That thing is 11 years old by now [1] and the closest we have to that is probably CP2077 ... and only if you ignore the console ports, yuck. [1] I am aware of the fact that "back in the day" they used three 580s in SLI or something crazy to run it, but that performance was already surpassed two years later by single card setups.
- pugworthy 5y agoI sometimes think if an article like this got done with actual images of people while claiming it was CG, there would still be a lot of, "I could tell immediately it was CG". "It is so terrible", and "The faces look so bad" etc.
- hackshack 5y agoThanks to HN, I checked it out on my PS5 tonight. Very impressive. The thing that immediately jumped out at me was the 24fps target. The demo has a cinematic feeling, and thus the 24fps framerate feels “correct.” Compared to 60fps, you can do a lot more when you have 2.5x as much time per frame. The first part is a CGI representation of Keanu and Carrie-Anne. I was shocked at the quality; it had “the demoscene feel,” if you know what I mean - “I did not know the hardware could do that.” Artists going full OCD, just because it was the right thing to do. Great work. Parts of it had that CGI feeling, but most of the first two minutes, I swear I was watching video and not CG. Part 2: the city tour. I am not sure if there’s a detailed YouTube video of same, but the artists used some clever tricks, as any good 3D artist would. You can fly around and peer into offices and apartments through their windows. There are a limited number of static rooms, and they use frosted glass to blur the details. Interiors are fully modeled and there is parallax through the glass. HVAC units on rooftops are robust, down to the warning messages. Great use of LOD. I saw Z-fighting and LOD “popping” when surveying the city from on high. I walked away from this (um, got up from the sofa) thinking Epic’s gambit is to push Unreal Engine 5 as a virtual movie set. They went all out on the character models in the first part, with Keanu and Carrie-Anne. There were a few uncanny valley shots (“dead eyes”) but very impressive overall. Some of the shots could be taken as a reference, or gold standard. Even more impressive is that it’s running on a (loss leader) $600 Sony PS5.
- alkonaut 5y ago> The thing that immediately jumped out at me was the 24fps target The demo runs capped at 24fps? That has to feel almost unplayable in an interactive setting? A dip below 30 in an interactive first person perspective is usually pretty disturbing.
- stordoff 5y agoThe intro scenes are capped at 24fps. The interactive segments run at 30fps with dips. Digital Foundry discussed it here - https://youtu.be/ib6_c6uliLg?t=1985 https://youtu.be/ib6_c6uliLg?t=1985
- codethief 5y ago
- ErneX 5y agoI'm surprised at the amount of comments with a jaded tone. This is one the most impressive tech demos I've seen running on real time, and I watched Second Reality by Future Crew back in the early 90s when it came out. The car chase sequence is mind blowing and then you get to free roam the city by foot, car or even drone. Nanite and lumen are something special.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoTech demos are just that: demos. Very few, if any, studios will release a game on that engine with such fidelity. And given the current practice of AAA studios now starting to charge $70 for base games and still releasing them as a broken mess, I doubt we'll see any game be as remotely exciting as the demo.
- retox 5y agoYes, the set piece is very impressive, but thats the upside of running on rails, the devs have complete control over almost everything. When you're dumped in the world on your own the environment is very high quality, but as soon as you start doing the kinds of things you would in a normal openworld game like this is presented the framerate quickly tanks to the low double digits. Try driving into a line of cars for instance. The number of cars around the city is very impressive, until you realize a lot of them are non-interactive static props. It's a tech demo, and I doubt the game itself will reflect much of what you see here.
- ErneX 5y agoThis isn't going to be a game. They wanted to show UE5 working on current gen consoles and showcase the tooling, for example the city was built procedurally with Houdini. Even the free roaming is impressive, the whole scene is lit by the sun. They recognized there are still things to work out like the car collisions that you mentioned, all the cars are rendered with nanite until you collide with them, at that point they are being swapped to "traditional" models. I mean for a tech demo it even has way more consistent pedestrian and vehicle simulation consistency even a way long distances than AAA games like Cyberpunk 2077.