Unreal Engine 4 videos show off tech demos

As promised, at E3 Epic properly lifted the wraps off its next-generation engine, Unreal Engine 4. While the real-time cinematic teased before is jolly nice and all, the real highlight is a good long look at the tech and tools themselves.

"It is up to Epic ... to motivate Sony and Microsoft not to phone in what these next consoles are going to be. It needs to be a quantum leap," Epic design director Cliff Bleszinski recently commented. "They need to damn near render Avatar in real time, because I want it and gamers want it--even if they don't know they want it."

Of course, the PC is used to show off these demos and will happily keep pace with it all.

Square Enix also showed off its new engine, Luminous Studio, with the Agni's Philosophy tech demo. Nvidia was around too, to show off real-time characters on its GPUs with A New Dawn.

If you simply want to watch a pretty thing, here's that UE4 'Elemental' demo:

But the real meat and potatoes is in this ten-minute walkthrough, showing off specific effects and capabilities of Unreal Engine 4. It also demonstrates how remarkably clean and simple the editor and workflow are for developers, which will surely save a fair few hours and headaches: