The Witcher IV's lush world is on display in Unreal Engine 5.6 demo

Epic Games held its annual State of Unreal event today, offering a first look at some exciting new features coming to Unreal Engine 5 through a tech demo set in the world of The Witcher IV.

The team at Epic Games, together with CD Projekt Red — developers of the Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077 — premiered a roughly ten-minute gameplay and cinematic demo that follows Ciri through a snowy mountain pass in Kovir and into the bustling port of Valdrest. The visuals in the demo are not truly final scenes from The Witcher IV but serve as a proof of concept intended to highlight the cutting-edge graphics and tech behind the new Witcher installment.

The demo ran on a PlayStation 5 at 60 frames per second with ray tracing enabled. This was made possible by a slew of new open-world building features coming to Unreal Engine 5.6, including a new “Fast Geometry Streaming Plugin.” Epic says the new plugin should help open-worlds load faster, though exactly how much faster is unclear. A marketplace scene set in Valdrest brimming with life also underscored the ability to create scenes full of high-fidelity characters and visual effects.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the demo was the vast foliage that made up the forests of Kovir. This is thanks to Nanite Foliage, a new system that renders every leaf and branch as real 3D geometry instead of flat textures. This new feature, slated for release with Unreal Engine 5.7, allows for dense high-fidelity foliage without a huge hit to performance.

Unreal Engine 5.6 is now available though many of the tools announced today are marked as experimental, including the Fast Geometry Streaming Plugin, new Control Rig Physics, improved motion capture tools and more. There is no specific release date for Unreal Engine 5.7 yet. As for The Witcher IV, we know not to expect it before 2027.

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