This week, Unity Technologies introduced Unity 6, the latest version of its Unity Engine. To demonstrate what it can do, the team released a video showing off its key features. But when you compare it to what Unreal Engine 5 has accomplished, Unity 6’s tech demo falls short. So, let’s take a look at it.
Unity 6 comes with some cool upgrades. This new version aims to make games run faster on it. So, some of the performance technologies developers can use are GPU Resident Drawer, GPU Occlusion Culling, and Spatial-Temporal Post-Processing. These changes will make games run smoother. And trust me, after checking out Cities Skylines 2, Unity totally needed these upgrades. Let’s now hope that developers will take advantage of them.
Unity 6 will also bring some other cool stuff. It will have Adaptive Probe Volumes, making the lighting and nature scenes in games even more realistic. It will also have better SpeedTree integration. And there’s more. It will further boost performance with GPU Resident Drawer, GPU Occlusion Culling, and Spatial-Temporal Post-Processing (STP). Oh, and there will be support for WebGPU, letting you play games on the web, in browsers, and even in apps.
Now while everything on paper seems great, this first tech demo does not look particularly impressive. I mean, look at it. Does this make you say <<Wow, that’s a huge step from the previous Unity Engine>>? Perhaps the team focused on efficiency and not on fancy graphics. The point is that the end result is a bit underwhelming.
In the Unity 6 tech demo, there are numerous pop-in issues, and it’s kind of a bummer. Unreal Engine 5, with its Nanite, is way better. Nanite makes things show up in games super smoothly, without annoying pop-ins. Try playing some UE5 games, then switch to others like Cyberpunk 2077 or Alan Wake 2. You’ll immediately notice the difference. It’s a game-changer.
I also wasn’t impressed by the lighting of this Unity 6 Tech Demo. There is nothing here that can rival UE5’s Lumen. Sure thing, developers will be able to use Ray Tracing. But RT (as well as Path Tracing) can be implemented in every engine. What I’m saying is that the default lighting solution does not appear to be that amazing.
Let’s also not forget that Unity games never quite matched up to their impressive tech demos. Show me one game that looks as good as the Enemies Tech Demo or The Heretic tech demo. Or what about the Unity Engine Megacity tech demo? Hell, even the ADAM Tech Demo from 2018 looks better than every Unity game. It’s a shame really as these tech demos looked spectacular. And I know, some will say that UE5’s The Matrix Demo is also beyond what UE5 games currently look like. However, The Matrix Demo showcases next-gen visuals. That’s not really the case with Unity 6.
All in all, I’m a bit disappointed by this first Unity 6 Tech Demo. I’m certain that the team can push the engine further. Tech demos can also look better with Ray Tracing. But, without RT, Unity 6 already feels dated. And that’s really a bummer.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
The giant hard on for UE5 continues.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/3235ac7f48106a6412f9172db2c03c2b8660976b434beb3e7497aaac7b41f71a.gif
And UE5 always leaves a nice “consideration” on the dresser table for old jonnyboy, he gives good love!….
yep.
hey at least it will run on something that isnt a 400 bucks gpu.
plenty of unity games run like crap even ON 400 bucks gpus.
One of the reasons I shun away from unity games, especially 3d ones.
yeah 2d or retro style games run well on unity but the new unreal engine is insanely demanding.
Likely from UE5 being comparatively limited in scalablity.
As always… Woosh!
I do not think you understand who uses the Unity engine.
99% of indie games are made with Unity, not Unreal.
For smaller developers, raytracing or global illumination is not a priority and most do not care about raytracing at all.
Arguing Unity needs fancier raytracing is like arguing Nintendo will fail if they do not implement raytracing on Switch.
Unity developers do not generally overlap with Unreal developers. They are not in direct competition. The players also rarely overlap, the people playing Goose Game (Unity) are generally not the same people playing Lords of the Fallen (Unreal).
Just look at the Cozy Game scene. Unity is acutely aware of this scene and has specific assets and articles for these developers on their blogs. Cozy Game Youtube channels draw in millions of gamers. This is one of the fastest growing demographics in gaming, especially on PC and Switch. These games cater to both men and women, people who just want a fun relaxing game to play that does not require fancy hardware. Almost all these games are made with Unity.
Unreal is a clumsy resource hog with lots of features that are completely pointless for smaller games. Prototyping in Unity is easier, working with sprites in Unity is easier, working with small teams is easier in Unity.
Unity is not trying to be Unreal Engine, they do not cater to the same developers.
But that article wouldn’t get clicks. Would also be more difficult to write.
We not in 2012, there barely any games using Unity nowadays, as most indie devs been shifting to Unreal Engine.
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/facepalm
The top 5 new indie games in 2023 by sales numbers and by indie GOTY nominations are:
-Sea of Stars
-Dave the Diver
-Dredge
-Darkest Dungeon II
-Hollow Knight: Silksong
All off them use Unity.
And none of them were coded in 2023, 0/10 for effort.
Way to pull that 99% value out of your backside.
Who gives a damn if it’s 99% or 96% or 98%, the large large majority of indie games use Unity. Almost none use Unreal.
Unreal wouldn’t even be second on the list after Unity, it would be GameMaker.
5 out of 5 games nominated for the 2023 indie GOTY Awards use Unity. That’s 100%.
For John is all about fancy graphics and his 4090 value card.
Which unreal engine 5 doesn’t even utilise to it’s fullest due to sw lumen lol which looks garbage next to metro exodus.
Well said
Unreal 5 is simply not scalable enough for wide use. Especially for lower-power profile hardware.
But infinitely less demanding and can probably outperform UE5 on 2D games.
This comparison is only relevant for graphic w*nkers who desperately try to justifie their stupid 1500 bucks GPU purchase like the author
Lots of MMOs and indies can benefit from a more capable Unity Engine. So it is very much welcomed.
Which UE5 title, you played last time, had no performance issues ? I am rocking at 960-1080p with my rtx3080 (internal res with dlss) on most of the UE5 titles. Went back to 2010 thanks to couple of reflection gimmicks. And none of the UE5 titles look special despite the hardware they need.
I think bioshock used UE3 or 4 looks ok but of course old games and cartoony no doubt, for realism not sure it’s well suited though for efficient optimized usage of hardware, even if you have brute force still probably has problems.
look at the npcs path finding lol, just make it scripted for the review
cities skyline2 has some raytracing, look in the advanced settings. there’s a denoiser too.
‘miles behind’
Depends what you are comparing, the demo looks very solid as far as draw distance goes, with minimal pop in.
>And trust me, after checking out Cities Skylines 2, Unity totally needed these upgrades. Let’s now hope that developers will take advantage of them.
Any engine is just the canvas that may also be bundled with brushes, coating and paint next to it. The fact that you use them doesn’t make you a talanted artist right away and if you came up with your own brushes and paint having no idea what you gonna come up with (exactly what happened to City Skylines 2) that’s even worse. Too bad that has to explained to you.
https://blog.paavo.me/cities-skylines-2-performance/
It looks pretty good from what I can see. Sure, there are some noticeable LOD pop-in and culling issues, but it does not look bad overall. If it runs good, then it will be a capable engine. As for Unity’s corporate shenanigans, that is a different issue altogether.
Unity is relatively issue-free for me as well.
Try playing some UE5 games, then switch to others like Cyberpunk 2077 or Alan Wake 2. You’ll immediately notice the difference. It’s a game-changer.
It indeed is a game changer, changes the FPS by half.
the engine is still way ahead of it’s time. i wouldn’t even compare it to Cyberpunk’s low budget render models. quite possibly UE5 is still some years away before any real developer team can shed some light on some it’s more advanced features. for the time being i’m still satisfied with UE4’s visuals to performance. lies of p, 7remake, and star wars perform great .
the engine is still way ahead of it’s time. i wouldn’t even compare it to Cyberpunk’s low budget render models. quite possibly UE5 is still some years away before any real developer team can shed some light on some it’s more advanced features. for the time being i’m still satisfied with UE4’s visuals to performance. lies of p, 7remake, and star wars perform great .
the engine is still way ahead of it’s time. i wouldn’t even compare it to Cyberpunk’s low budget render models. quite possibly UE5 is still some years away before any real developer team can shed some light on some it’s more advanced features. for the time being i’m still satisfied with UE4’s visuals to performance. lies of p, 7remake, and star wars perform great .
Everyone is moving to Godot after their last stunt.
I read a thing on Ars Technica about a guy trying to salvage trust in it. Look up “Man regain Unity Trust” or something like that over at that site. Plus, it’s not an immediate even certainly not 100% a foregone conclusion. Not everyone is going into Godot straight away. Besides, the plans for such stunt were amended to soften the blow and the old CEO who tried that is gone now anyway. That alone means building back trust is only a matter of time.
Yeah there’s always something off about unity games and tbh most of these almost public game engines games, for so many devs claiming their game is unique and such it’s a bit of a contradiction there. It’s like when a line of cars buys all the engines from someone else and pretty much everything else but the bodywork is just tweaked and the badge is theirs, it’s “unique” lol Nah it’s just price optimized to turn around for profit maximizing or for a certain market segment, big devs think like this. At least a custom engine is part of the creativity and uniqueness of a dev house, but everything we see is to cut labor costs and time to market too.
Similar to pushing STEM where now it’s a flooded market with the corresponding lower salaries and slave level expectations by companies, you can apply that to any higher paid profession btw but STEM is the most abused because it has some of the highest base-guaranteed salaries.
Cyberpunk, Elden Ring, Alan Wake 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Witcher 3 all top games, and are not using either of this engines. Both of these engines are a failure. U5 seems to getting better but still needs a top game and fix for its stuttering issues.
Who cares? Name me any iconic game or anything that’s remotely game changing that has come out thus far on UE5. All the good stuff have either come out on the prior versions or on other engines as others have pointed out.
Ray Tracing is not going to make or break a game. It’s a feature most people would never take notice of unless they were to research about it. And in terms of gameplay value it provides nothing at all. Unless we had a game like Splinter Cell to make use of that feature (Hitman is the only series I can think of that actually made RT a part of their gameplay loop) then it’s really not all that important.
The technology is still new and not that many people can utilise it just yet unless they’re okay with having low performances or low quality RT.
A lot of these wannabe developers getting into UE don’t seem to get much further than a fancy raytraced tech demo.
Your raytraced puddle of water you spent 4 weeks on looks great, but it’s not a game buddy. Where is your gameplay.
I have more confidence in a person who is into board games or old-school 16-bit-era games to deliver a working game with a decent game loop in Unity, than these people obsessed with the 3D graphics of UE.
Yep. I remember a time when tech demos used to be shown off in conferences as a way to entice consumers and investors alike but now that seems to be prioritised over making actual games.
At the start it was pretty exciting to see sole developers from all over the world making technical showcases but now I feel like that thrill has somewhat faded among the community beyond the casual folks who are easily impressed by anything.
When I see a game that boasts about its “next-gen” visuals it really does nothing for me unless the gameplay offers something different. It’s why I think Nintendo games continue to do so well. They know that cutting edge graphics aren’t the be-all and end-all of things.
Right. Nintendo has amazing artists, but their focus has always been on extremely tight and refined gameplay.
AND unfortunately lawyerball and hostility to fan sharing of videos and such, the leaks are likely due to that reason.
Graphics, like story, will never be a bigger importance than actual gameplay.
Art direction> Graphics
I’d take a UE3 game with a great style over a UE5 game with all the slider turned to 11 any day.
Also, basically, the reason I prefer Microsoft’s over Sony’s. At least Xbox games actually know what style they want and how to best implement it.
Given how Super Mario Party is on Switch I can see this style of graphics will be used in Unity. They don’t have to go for ultra realism. Aslong as they don’t mess with devs and have a optimal engine with games that don’t need 10+ patches after launch that is all that will mater. Well the games need to be fun as well. But yeah 😀
Hardly surprising, the dev’s have been hard at work to monetize its player and dev base alike rather than working on real engine improvements. This can’t come as a shock to anyone really!
Meanwhile unreal stutter engine seems to have been producing better visuals… and more stutter than ever!
Agree on some points, but I feel Unity 6 has big jumps even if only marginally more visually complex.