At the end of last year, Epic Games released a major update for Unreal Engine 5, which received the number 5.1. He significantly improved the Lumen and Nanite technologies, which have become a kind of hallmark of this engine. Lumen is a realistic lighting system similar to classic ray tracing, with the difference that it can also be run in software. Nanite, on the other hand, is an intelligent rendering system that allows objects to be rendered in greater numbers and in greater detail, using compression that is almost indistinguishable from a classic image. Epic tested improvements to both technologies in the popular Fortnite battle royale, making the game really shine. While the novelty is running smoothly on PC and new consoles, Richard Leadbetter from Digital Foundry decided to test the title on a much less powerful device, which is the Steam Deck.
At first I tried about the same settings as the Xbox Series S, only at a lower resolution. It seemed surprisingly efficient, with frame rates hovering around 50. But it soon became apparent that something was wrong. While Nanite worked fine, Lumen didn’t work anymore. It seems that the software implementation of this technology does not work in Steam Deck due to some kind of bug. Therefore, Leadbetter was forced to turn on hardware acceleration, which, of course, significantly reduced FPS. Native 720p was about 20fps, but with TSR upscaling technology (which is included directly in Unreal Engine) you can go up to 30, although not quite stable and, of course, with a significant loss in image quality.
But the important thing is that the game was even launched on such a device, it’s definitely no small success and proof of what Steam Deck is capable of.
Will the Steam Deck be able to work with the advanced RT Lumen and Nanite technologies from Unreal Engine 5? AMD’s custom CPU is under heavy stress – very hard – but the results are intriguing: https://t.co/urrbiZFZjA pic.twitter.com/10Pf5eyDRO
— Digital Foundry (@digitalfoundry) January 6, 2023
Source :Indian TV
