Unreal Engine 5.5: Cyberpunk Metropolis Tech Demo Unveiled

An innovative cyberpunk city walkthrough tech demo, powered by Unreal Engine 5.5.3, has been released by artist Sciontidesign. Inspired by the Samaritan UE3 demo, Blade Runner, and the Cyberpunk 2077 aesthetic, this project showcases the engine's capabilities on high-end hardware: an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU, AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM (6000MHz).

This technical demonstration utilizes dynamic lighting, Nanite with Distance Field Meshes, Ambient Occlusion, and Screen Space Reflections. Significantly, it omits advanced features like Lumen, Path Tracing, RTX, DLSS, and baked lighting, demonstrating UE5's potential even without its most sophisticated tools.

The rain effect, while somewhat artificial, renders impressively detailed wet surfaces, enhancing the city's atmosphere. However, the demo is hampered by frequent invisible walls, impacting immersion. While Unreal Engine 5 tech demos consistently boast stunning visuals, games built on the engine often face performance challenges in real-world applications.