Epic Games recently showcased a live demo for its Unreal Engine 5.2 during the State of Unreal event. The demo, called Electric Dream, highlights several new features and optimizations that come with the latest version.

The "State of Unreal" showcase recently revealed the demo of Unreal Engine 5.2, "Electric Dreams", which follows the basic features of Lumen, a dynamic global illumination and reflection system, and Nanite, a virtualized micropolygon Geometry system. However, the focus of this demo is on tools for procedural content creation and rendering of foliage.

One of the most notable features of Unreal Engine 5.2 is the toolbox for procedural worldbuilding. During the demo, a large cliff is moved, and the areas of the game world where the cliff was located are automatically re-filled by the Unreal Engine. The game's physics is also incredibly realistic, with everything from the vines to the rocks and water responding appropriately. This is due to the Chaos Physics engine, which outperforms both PhysX and Nvidia's open-source physics engine and will be gradually replacing them.

Epic reported that since the launch of Unreal Engine 5, 77% of users have transitioned to the new engine. The demo showcases a photorealistic Rivian R1T truck moving through a lifelike environment built with Quixel Megascans. The Substrate shading system demonstrated in the demo allows for layering different shading models to achieve higher levels of fidelity and quality than previously possible with Unreal Engine 5.2. The demo also features advancements in physics such as tire deformation, air suspension, and realistic fluid simulation and water rendering.

The new demo is experimental and part of the Preview release of Unreal Engine 5.2. It is expected to lead to impressive-looking games in the future.