'The Cavern' is a cinematic test demo The Coalition built in Unreal Engine 5

During today’s State of Unreal event, Gears of War developer The Coalition showed off an impressive cinematic test demo called “The Cavern” created using Unreal Engine 5. As noted by an accompanying Xbox Wire post, The Cavern was created by The Coalition “entirely in UE5.”

Prior to The Cavern, The Coalition had created another tech demo called “Alpha Point” which was originally created in Unreal Engine 4 before being brought over to Unreal Engine 5.

The process of bringing Alpha Point over to UE5 is described as being easy and seamless by The Coalition studio technical director, Kate Rayner. “As of now, our full studio has transitioned to UE5,” Rayner remarks in the Xbox Wire post.

Diving deeper into the creation of The Cavern and the studio’s utilization of Unreal Engine 5, Rayner explains:

We were able to utilize a preliminary version of our next-gen face rig and hire an actor wearing a head-cam to capture performance, and partner with Cubic Motion to bring it all to life. That, coupled with Control Rig, helped us create someone who looks and moves in the most realistic ways we’ve ever done, and it’s incredibly exciting to think where we can go next.

We also utilized Chaos cloth physics to get to a really high level of visual fidelity, and we’re extremely pleased with the results. The coolest part is that we’ve got all these great visuals and animations running on an Xbox Series X, so that just gives you an idea of the visual fidelity and quality we’re going to be able to create.

Demos like this allow us to learn a great deal about the performance of UE5, and I think it’s safe to say that we’re going to be able to create some pretty incredible things with this new tech.

Rayner then goes on to answer other questions regarding The Cavern and its creation in Unreal Engine 5, while pointing out the team isn’t ready to talk about their next game just yet. However, there are clues as to how detailed the game may end up looking thanks to tools like Lumen and Nanite.

We’re not ready to talk about our next game. But we are excited for things like Lumen and Nanite, which have opened new doors for us. You can see the impact of Nanite already in our cinematic tech test, which enables full-quality movie assets to be rendered in real-time.

This means that our artists can create assets with tens of millions of polygons, scalable to scenes with billions and billions. The details are just incredible, more than 100 times what was possible before. Just looking at the eyeball detail the number of vertices and polygons are the equivalent of what an entire character would have been in the previous generation of games.

You also see how we’re doing new things with light. Fully dynamic real-time global illumination lighting has been a long-sought-after feature, but up until now, it’s not been possible on a console. Lumen is a total game-changer.

Also included in the Xbox Wire post is an overview of how long The Coalition has been working with UE5. According to Rayner, the team has been working with UE5 for over a year now, since before UE5 went into Early Access.

The Coalition is also described in the Xbox Wire post as being “instrumental” in bringing The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience to Xbox Series X|S consoles. That said, Rayner notes that The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 experience was “very much a collaboration with Epic, The Coalition, and the Xbox development team, to harden and optimize Epic’s vision, first on Xbox Series X, and then on Xbox Series S.”

Wrapping things up and commenting on what The Coalition is most looking forward to with UE5, Rayner states:

For more on The Cavern cinematic test demo, Alpha Point, The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 experience, and other aspects of Unreal Engine 5, be sure to read through the full post on Xbox Wire.

After taking a look at The Cavern, we’re curious what you think about it, and about Unreal Engine 5 as a whole. Let us know in Chatty, and for more on the State of Unreal event, be sure to check out this story about how Crystal Dynamics is developing a new Tomb Raider game using Unreal Engine 5.