Unreal Engine 5.5 Tech Demo Offers Glimpse Into a Futuristic Cyberpunk Metropolis

An innovative cyberpunk city tech demo, powered by Unreal Engine 5.5.3, offers players an immersive walkthrough of a futuristic metropolis. Created by artist Sciontidesign, this project draws inspiration from the Samaritan UE3 demo, the Blade Runner franchise, and the overall aesthetic of Cyberpunk 2077. Showcased on high-end hardware—an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU, AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D CPU, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM (6000MHz)—the demo relies entirely on dynamic lighting. This showcases the power of Nanite with Distance Field Meshes and Ambient Occlusion, combined with Screen Space Reflections. The absence of advanced features like Lumen, Path Tracing, RTX, DLSS, or baked lighting highlights UE5's capabilities even without its most sophisticated tools.

The rain effect, while somewhat artificial, impressively renders detailed wet surfaces, adding depth to the city environment. However, frequent invisible walls unfortunately detract from the immersive experience. While Unreal Engine 5 tech demos consistently deliver visually stunning results, games built on the engine often face performance challenges in real-world applications.