The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience showcases what the next generation of interactive experiences has to offer, including vast open worlds, even more interactive action, and levels of graphic realism that rival cutscenes.
Ross Hogben of the American studio Epic Games talks about the creation of The Matrix Awakens using the Unreal Engine 5 graphics engine: Games and its partners (SideFX, Evil Eye Pictures, The Coalition or WetaFX).
In the demos, we can see amazingly realistic digital copies of Keanu Reeves and Carrie Ann-Moss. The demo then turns into an interactive experience with car chases and a rhythmic third-person shooter. These sequences are fully dynamic, meaning the reactions of the environment to the player’s actions are not scripted.
This is possible thanks to Chaos, Unreal Engine’s high-performance physics system that allows real-time disruption of cinematic quality, and simulate the movement of clothes, hair, vehicles, etc. The team used Sequencer to script the car chase. The team members used the simulated universe to try out different creative cutscenes.
They traveled around the virtual city by car in search of the most interesting maps. That’s what live-action filmmakers do when they explore the city in search of the perfect streets to shoot, but without the physical constraints of the real world. The team members used the simulated universe to try out different creative cutscenes.
Explore the future of interactive storytelling and entertainment with #UE5. Download ‘The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience’ for free on @PlayStation 5 and @Xbox Series X/S: https://t.co/1FyMhfnQEq pic.twitter.com/wfylo5Kt2f
He also elaborates: “We built a large open-world city of 16 square kilometers with 7,000 buildings made up of thousands of modular rooms, each of which itself is millions of triangles, dressed in objects, signs, garbage, etc.
The city has 1,248 simulated intersections, 45,073 parked cars (of which 38,146 can pass), over 260 km of roads, and 512 km of sidewalks. This huge dynamic environment is incredibly rich, complex and realistic. It consists of billions of polygons created by Nanite, UE5’s virtualized micro polygon geometry system. Richer and more interactive, this demo sets the bar very high in terms of interactive content quality.
Because the open world environment of The Matrix is awakening: The Unreal Engine 5 experience is a city that breathes and lives. Characters and traffic are not spontaneously generated according to the direction the player is facing, they are part of a global simulation that is constantly being evaluated. In short, they exist whether we see them or not. Thus, the characters and vehicles in the experience behave much more believably.
The environment feels more real than the interactive experience we’ve seen so far, thanks to new UE5 technologies that process all elements dynamically and in real time, rather than providing offline precomputed visuals, which was usually the case before.
Lumen is a great example of this. Thanks to this powerful global illumination system, the accuracy of reflected light, like reflections from mirrors or wet surfaces, is closer than ever to the physical world. Because Lumen is displayed in real time, you can adjust the brightness of the image by moving the sun at any angle and see immediate effects. There’s even an experimental night mode to discover, hidden inside the experience.
To give the impression of a huge metropolis, it was inhabited by tens of thousands of ultra-realistic digital characters controlled by a complex artificial intelligence system.
The Matrix Awakens: The Unreal Engine 5 Experience on Video
The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is available on PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.