DF Direct Weekly is our regular scheduled show concentrating on the latest gaming and technology news - and sometimes that's problematic as there isn't always much of note to discuss. Last week was heading down this path until the arrival of a remarkable video trailer for Unrecord, an upcoming tactical shooter from developer Drama. Ultra-realistic with excellent materials work and lighting combined with an excellent GoPro-style camera simulation produced a slice of gameplay that many believed to be fake - but it isn't.
Of course, we've seen something similar before. Last year, there was a great deal attention given to a replay camera view taken from the game Ride 4, which also 'went viral' - and for similar reasons. The same kind of overcast/blown-out lighting is in full effect, while camera motion added an additional layer of realism. These techniques have the same kind of impact in Unrecord, but with a twist - Unreal Engine 5's material system and ray-traced lighting produce an even more realistic effect.
As UE5 along with Lumen and Nanite become more widely adopted by developers, our hunch is that you're going to be seeing a whole lot more of these kind of videos - not just the extreme realism seen here, more in terms of an elevated level of accomplishment in visuals more generally. With Unrecord, the only real question from our perspective is whether that dynamic camera is actually compatible with gameplay, or whether a lot of users will suffer motion sickness as a result. Based on Ride 4, a more traditional camera set-up delivers a much more game-like presentation.