An innovative new tech demo powered by Unreal Engine 5.5.3 has been released, offering players an immersive walkthrough of a futuristic cyberpunk city. Developed by the talented artist Sciontidesign, this project draws its inspiration from a trio of iconic sources: the Samaritan UE3 demo, the atmospheric Blade Runner franchise, and the visually striking Cyberpunk 2077 aesthetic. Showcased on high-end hardware, the demo runs smoothly on an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU, paired with an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU and bolstered by 32GB of DDR5 RAM operating at 6000MHz.

This technical demonstration is a testament to the power of Unreal Engine, relying exclusively on dynamic lighting to showcase the capabilities of Nanite with Distance Field Meshes and Ambient Occlusion, enhanced further by Screen Space Reflections. It's noteworthy that advanced features like Lumen, Path Tracing, RTX, DLSS, or baked lighting were not used, highlighting what UE5 can achieve even without its most sophisticated tools.

While the rain effect in the demo may come across as somewhat artificial, the rendering of wet surfaces is impressively detailed, adding a rich layer of depth to the urban environment. However, the experience is marred by frequent invisible walls, which detract from the overall immersion. Unreal Engine 5 tech demos are renowned for delivering visually stunning experiences, yet games built on this engine often face performance challenges when implemented in real-world scenarios.