The Making of “Alpha Point”—UE5 Technical Demo | GDC 2021

Catch the public debut of Alpha Point, a UE5 technical demo created by The Coalition to evaluate UE5 on the Xbox Series X/S. Hear what the team learned as they tested internal Nanite assets in Lumen-driven lighting scenarios, as well as their thoughts on how UE5’s performance and memory stacks up in Xbox Series X and S-style production environments.

Presented by Kate Rayner, Studio Technical Director and Colin Penty, Technical Art Director at The Coalition

[colteastwood]

I absolutely cannot wait to see what The Coalition brings next!

[alexisayala]

I really like the transparency with this. It’s nice to see some of their process.

[alphaorg]

I was always a big fan of Unreal Engine from Unreal 1 and UT99 onward. I really liked messing with .ini files back in the day when you could tune graphics quality to a much finer degree, so I was getting above 60FPS all the time. I will forever look back with fondness to UT99 and UT2004. I played UT99 e-sports-ish (esports back in the day wasn't a thing) at expos and once I was in finale and lost being 2nd where I lost by 1 point at the map "three towers". I will never forget this. I got some pretty decent awards. Latest Sound Blaster, Mouse and something else. 1st got a GPU if I'm not mistaken. I'm software developer and was always followed Tim Sweeney and his creation Unreal Engine through more than 20 years. Around 10y ago he was talking at some conferences and was describing what I believe became known as Lumen and Nanite. He had a vision and I believe Unreal Engine 5 will be the most important step forward...

[pcgamingftw]

Fantastic work and very insightful presentation. Confirmed pretty much all that I had anticipated, given what we learned from the tech demos and UE5 preview. I think this generation more than any other will have to rely on good concepts, practical workflows, talented artists, but most importantly great leadership in the teams! Last gen already showed a plethora of triple a projects failing, due to leadership issues and internal conflicts. The outcries from developers inside studios from Ubisoft and Blizzard for example or the stories about crunching at CD Projekt, Naughty Dog and Rockstar show how important a healthy work atmosphere/environment is. Here is hoping that studios and publishers learn from this, so that developers will have a better future! Wishing all the best to the coalition and any other devs out there, using their talents and hard work to produce these amazing games!

[collierx]

Fantastic video! Kudos to Colin for not only knowing the tech, but explaining it so us fans can understand. That breeds excitement! Cant wait for follow-ups.

[AosZ]

Thanks for sharing the analytics and professional challenges and insight with using Ue5.

[PolygonAcademy]

super cool breakdown, thanks for this :)

[andrewwood]

Awesome presentation. I cannot wait to see what you guys are doing with your next game!

[anotheruser]

Thank you, Kate Rayner, and Colin Penty, and all at Coalition. (Epic)
Very informative

[getrekt]

Great explanation of workflow/pipeline and features.

[unap]

Whatever comes out Coalition shall hopefully go a long way towards demonstrating the scalability of both the engine as well as their own optimization when developing for both XSX and XSS. Still bummed that XSS comes with less usable RAM than One X and I wonder what effects it will have, despite the SSD, on the overall scope of the projects. Of course, the public may not know for a long time as these conceptualization processes remain behind closed doors as they undergo myriad iteration to reach the retail stage.

[telefonbarmann]

Great showcase, very informative. Thanks for sharing :)

[rodrigoferreiramaciel]

would be great if you guys posted the test with the character in the demo for us to see how it looks!

[khs]

Can't wait to see the new IP they're working on even if it's a small title.

[elemenopio]

Seeing how The Coalition is made up of a few Epic / Gears Games vets I cannot wait to see how they along with the other GFX Visuals teams at all the Microsoft Games Studios will utilize UEV in the next 2-3 years.

[ItsAkile]

finally got to take a look, 5:33 if you want to jump ahead

[antiRuka]

Is decal really pronounced like that instead of deecal?

[ciprianstanciu]

I wonder how did you get to 100M tris/scene number since UE5 doesn't count the triangles from indirect (nanite) draws and without those you usually have low numbers like 2M tris in the ancients demo. PIX is also broken with those indirect draws at the moment, so I'm really wondering how that estimate was computed.

[StrayVertex]

This was a fantastic presentation! Super informative and transparent!

[TruthIsKey]

Coalition is giving us the pros and cons of nanite and lumen, but what impresses me most is how they push the tech to further improve. This is what great devs does to enhance everything.