CDPR unveiled tech demo footage for The Witcher IV at Unreal Fest 2025, showing off the latest engine’s capabilities on a PS5. CDPR was quick to point out that the new video is not made from game footage but instead something it put together to showcase features of Unreal Engine 5.6, particularly how it has improved upon previous versions when it comes to handling hardware-intensive tasks such as ray tracing.
Per CDPR:
“First and foremost — what we presented at the State of Unreal 2025 is not gameplay footage from The Witcher 4. It’s a standalone tech demo, built to showcase the Unreal Engine 5 features and tools we’re using to develop the game’s open world.”
CDPR goes on to explain that it chose the PS5 over a high-end PC for its tech demo because of the challenges in providing high-quality visuals using advanced techniques while maintaining a locked 60 FPS setting. The demo utilized nanite foliage for natural-looking landscapes, Unreal Animation Framework, ML Deformer (noted for providing subtle details such as muscle movements), and MASS AI for more complex character animations and crowd scaling. FastGeo Streaming was used for optimized geometry loading, which somewhat explains the lack of stuttering commonly seen with UE, while also reducing or eliminating pop-in visuals or other anomalies.
“We started our strategic partnership with Epic Games to push open-world game technology forward. To show this early look at the work we’ve been doing using Unreal Engine running at 60 FPS on PlayStation 5, Is a significant milestone — and a testament of the great cooperation between our teams. But we’re far from finished. I look forward to seeing more advancements and inspiring technology from this partnership as development of The Witcher 4 on Unreal Engine 5 continues.”
MICHAŁ NOWAKOWSKI , Joint CEO CD PROJEKT RED
Unreal Engine 5.6 Feature Highlights
UE 5.6 will now shift hardware ray tracing tasks from the CPU to the GPU in an effort to eliminate CPU bottlenecks. Many game developers have typically kept to scaled-back RT usage with just shadows or limited lighting, thus avoiding the taxing effects of global illumination, but UE 5.6 aims to make that more economical on hardware resources.
“The Hardware Ray Tracing (HWRT) system enhancements are designed to deliver even greater performance for Lumen Global Illumination. By eliminating key CPU bottlenecks, you can author more complex scenes while maintaining a smoother 60 FPS frame rate.”
– Epic Games
Epic Games is also including device profiles to assist developers with achieving 60 FPS for both current-gen consoles and PCs. Accelerated animation authoring brings a big update intended to help streamline the process with a complete redesign of Motion Trails, Tween Tools, and Curve Editor. Lattice tool and Smart Key Snapping have been added to aid with more complex wireframes as well. The UX/UI has been simplified for improved workflow, which also includes a redesigned content browser. Basically, UE 5.6 sounds like it has had a major overhaul intended to decrease development time for games, movies, and other animation tasks, and can now be downloaded from here, where you can also see many more examples of the new changes that have been made. Below is the complete live-stream recording from yesterday’s unveiling.