Epic Games’ The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is now available for Xbox Series X|S and PS5 consoles, and it’s an incredible love letter to the franchise that not only offers a high-tech take on key scenes from the original trilogy but also thoroughly demonstrates the potential of Unreal Engine 5.
Comprising three separate experiences, The Matrix Awakens allows Matrix fans to check out eerily realistic virtual recreations of franchise stars Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss, who portray Neo and Trinity, respectively. There’s also an exciting chase scene inspired by the iconic sequence from 2003’s The Matrix Reloaded and an open-world section comprising a massive city, both of which are playable to some extent.
Epic Games’ Ross Hogben on how the demo takes advantage of next-gen hardware such as the PlayStation 5:
[…] we’ve built a vast, 16 kilometres square open world city, comprised of seven thousand buildings made of thousands of modular pieces, each of those constructed of millions of triangles and enhanced with props, signage, debris, and more. There are 1,248 simulated intersections, 45,073 parked cars (of which 38,146 are drivable), over 260 km of roads, and 512 km of sidewalk.
This huge, dynamic environment is incredibly rich, complex, and photoreal. It’s made up of billions of polygons that are streamed by Nanite, UE5’s virtualized micropolygon geometry system, and processed by PS5’s powerful CPU and GPU to deliver an incredibly high level of detail and visual fidelity. A powerful procedural audio generation system simulates the noise of being in a busy city, heightening the sense of presence in the environment.
The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience is now available as a free download for Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 consoles. It’s unclear when, or if, the experience will make its way over to the PC, which would presumably grant even greater visuals.
Source: The Matrix Awakens