Scans Factory has released a free Medieval Village Tech Demo in Unreal Engine 5.4. This tech demo features a Witcher-like environment, which may give us an idea of what The Witcher 4 may look like.
For those unaware, Scans Factory is the same team behind the amazing Rome Tech Demo. And similar to that tech demo, this new one pushes some of the best graphics we’ve ever seen.
Going into more details, this demo includes a range of thatched-roof huts, wooden barns, and storage sheds, crafted to reflect traditional Slavic building styles. It also comes with a variety of lighting options. PC users can use from bright, sunlit scenes to eerie, overcast atmospheres. Moreover, it features realistic elements like woodpiles, fences, carts, and small storage areas that bring the village to life with lived-in authenticity.
The team has provided two different builds. The first one is the UE5.4 version at native resolutions. The second is with DLSS. You can download them from the following links.
- UE 5.4 – https://bit.ly/49kfY0c OR https://bit.ly/4impROY
- DLSS version- https://bit.ly/4gj7TeD OR https://bit.ly/4fWYUzU
I went ahead and tried the demo, so here are some performance results. For capturing the following gameplay footage, I used an AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D with 32GB of DDR5 at 6000Mhz, and the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. We also used Windows 10 64-bit, and the GeForce 566.14 driver. I know there is a new driver for the game. Still, overall performance seemed already great. Moreover, we’ve disabled the second CCD on our 7950X3D.
So, at 4K/Ultra with DLSS, the tech demo was running with more than 70FPS at all times. These are great results in my opinion, especially given the visuals on display.
As you will see, this tech demo features some of the best graphics we’ve seen to date. I know, I know. This is a tech demo and not a real game. However, it pretty much gives us an idea of what future games will look like with UE5.
Scans Factory has taken advantage of Nanite, Lumen and Virtual Shadows Maps. As such, the lighting looks incredible, and there aren’t any noticeable pop-ins while exploring the environment. This is top quality.
Speaking of Unreal Engine 5, we recommend trying out these other free fan-made demos. You can grab a Superman UE5 Demo, a Halo 3: ODST Remake, and a Spider-Man UE5 Demo. There’s also a fan-made version of STALKER in Unreal Engine 5. If you love old-school FPS games, you should check out this remake of the classic FPS Blood in Epic’s engine. Don’t also forget the remake of Halo: Combat Evolved’s Halo level in UE5 or this free Attack on Titan game. Last month, we also shared a demo of King’s Field 2 in UE5. Finally, we have The Lord of the Rings: Conquest Reimagined in Unreal Engine 5, a remake of Flappy Bird, and a Diablo 2 Remake Demo. They all look awesome, so be sure to give them a try.
Enjoy and 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.”
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it seems like that hellblade 2 was just a warm up for this engine
wet mud, yummy.
I bet a game like this will be like 300gb large.
It reminds me what witchfire looked back in the reveal trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm1QjwxwDac
The only thing that blows me away is how low the FPS is and how horrible it looks in motion.
RDR2 after rain with better textures.
More like generic medieval village and forest.
There is 0% of The Witcher in this.
Nah it doesn't really, even if anyone can see it has an exorbitant amount of detail and work put into it, and it looks great.
But basically, we've seen similar demos by artists and related studios, and especially with tech demos, graphics are pretty close to a solved problem now, there's not much more margin to go up that would make much of a difference until we reach the very top of photorealism. Think of the Uncanny Valley and all of that.
The real problem now is optimizing engines and having devs optimize their games again so they run smoothly, AND having someone actually make great games again on top of that.
Agree completely, especially the last sentence. Its sad to see optimization have been basically thrown out of the window, but i guess many of the dev's became even lazier or saw an opportunity to shave off costs when upscaling, framegen and what not started to appear. On the other side of that performance issue is that engines seems to focus way to much on new flashy features than get things like stutters etc under control (yeah i'm looking at you UE). And the above only gets interesting if the title is even made for us gamers rather than the politics of the emo freakshow – that don't seem to be buying games at all. Just have to look at the politically driven titles sales and the studios that went under due to that. But its no big issue, have probably years of entertainment backlog so in no rush to spend money on trash.
Value for money gf cards like 4090 will play them so no problem
🤣 absolutely great value, John recommends
This slideshow needs the smooth transition feature.
It doesn't look realistic.
And the super wide camera angle is retarded.
Garbage UE5
Wasn't blown away
Looks great. The depressive comments are funny.
a beautiful realistic environment… that you can't so much as knock a plank of wood over
enough graphics, let go back to physics improvements
Not gonna happen
Looks "great" but This widespread Adoption of UE5 is leading to a games environment where everything is just Hyper Realism(UE5 Style)… well I don't play games to be in reality. I play games, to escape reality, the STALKER 1 vid you posted gave me more "feels" then this. Still DL'd it.
Still such a shame that witcher 4 is going to ditch REDEngine for UE5, its going to be a stutterfest. Maybe give the REDEngine to other devs, it got more potential than UE5
Few things on this world are as absolutely useless and pointless as tech demos.