The Callisto Protocol will feature ray tracing, according to Mark James, chief technical officer of Striking Distance Studios, who announced at Gamescom 2022. The game was created using Unreal Engine 4, however, the makers modified it to include a few small UE5 features (albeit not Lumen or Nanite).
Word from James
As per the sources, James explained that It was important for them to achieve physically consistent lighting and shadow model in the game. Contrast and occlusion make great horror. Using the corridor-based scale of around 20 meters, they found that around eight lights could be affecting the surface of the environment.
Unfortunately, they discovered that UE4 could only handle up to four shadow-generating lights, so we started by upgrading the engine to allow more lights at a cheaper cost per light.
They examined the UE4 ray tracing solution at the moment and discovered that we were required to develop their solution for the quantity of shadows we desired to create. As a substitute, we developed a Hybrid Ray Traced Shadows solution that adds ray traced shadow detail to the screen’s regions that are significant to the overall scene quality.
UE5 and The Callisto Protocol
James continued by stating that he has been quite pleased with the quality of the UE5 demos so far, but UE5 took a radically different approach to lighting with Lumen that didn’t fit the internal corridor architecture we envisioned for the game.
They examined sections of UE5 that they thought would be helpful for both development iterations and new console capabilities while they worked to finalize The Callisto Protocol on UE4.
They were even assisted by Epic in reintroducing a few of these elements into the engine that was specifically created for them. There are many modest optimizations and workflow enhancements that have benefited during the past few months, rather than any significant components that stick out.
Furthermore, other individuals also spoke with Mark James. It stated that he had verified that, besides the previously noted hybrid ray traced shadows, The Callisto Protocol also enables ray traced reflections.
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