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Title: The Witcher IV's lush world is on display in Unreal Engine 5.6 demo

Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2025 17:40:48 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-witcher-i...

Epic Games held its annual State of Unreal event today, offering a first look
at some exciting new features coming to Unreal Engine 5 through a tech demo
set in the world of The Witcher IV.

The team at Epic Games, together with CD Projekt Red ΓÇö developers of the
Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077 ΓÇö premiered a roughly ten-minute gameplay
and cinematic demo that follows Ciri through a snowy mountain pass in Kovir
and into the bustling port of Valdrest. The visuals in the demo are not truly
final scenes from The Witcher IV but serve as a proof of concept intended to
highlight the cutting-edge graphics and tech behind the new Witcher
installment.

The demo ran on a PlayStation 5 at 60 frames per second with ray tracing
enabled. This was made possible by a slew of new open-world building features
coming to Unreal Engine 5.6, including a new ΓÇ£Fast Geometry Streaming
Plugin.ΓÇ¥ Epic says the new plugin should help open-worlds load faster,
though exactly how much faster is unclear. A marketplace scene set in
Valdrest brimming with life also underscored the ability to create scenes
full of high-fidelity characters and visual effects.

Perhaps the most exciting part of the demo was the vast foliage that made up
the forests of Kovir. This is thanks to Nanite Foliage, a new system that
renders every leaf and branch as real 3D geometry instead of flat textures.
This new feature, slated for release with Unreal Engine 5.7, allows for dense
high-fidelity foliage without a huge hit to performance.

Unreal Engine 5.6 is now available though many of the tools announced today
are marked as experimental, including the Fast Geometry Streaming Plugin, new
Control Rig Physics, improved motion capture tools and more. There is no
specific release date for Unreal Engine 5.7 yet. As for The Witcher IV, we
know not to expect it before 2027.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/gaming/the-witcher-i...
unreal-engine-56-demo-174048532.html?src=rss

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