Oh, thank you. I'll check it out when I get bavk to my TV. The texture there on the wall to the far right of the screenshot you posted looks like it was lifted out of a part of PS1 game noone was supposed to see. 

The Witcher 4 won't look anywhere near what they showed overall. The detail on the horse model alone was a dead give-away. UE5 simply isn't capable of delivering that and still actually run on any hardware - look at the whole "Hell is Us" situation (even a RTX 5090 struggles on 4K Ultra settings). I have yet to play a single UE5 game that runs properly, and I've tried quite a few. Even CDPR themselves were adamant that this was simply a tech demo and not representative of actual gameplay. 

The talked about the use of Nanite to simplify the process of rendering vegetation and foliage, for instance, but Nanite has been around for years and not a single developer has made it work they way it was advertised from the beginning. Lumen is another issue; it's jaggy and taxing, and clashes with reflections on any liquid surface (extreme AA issues in most cases). 

Quite simply; UE5 is not an engine that can deliver what we saw in actual, playable form, not to mention on aging hardware like a PS5 base or Xbox Series S (the latter will be a real challenge). That said, I'm prepared for massive downgrades and I'd rather be able to run the damn thing properly and have it be a solid game.

Yeah, that is just a UE5 tech demo, using TW4 assets, not really TW4 demo.

I do understand from business perspective why switching to UE5 is "sensible choice" (though probably only short term), with "easy hire, easy fire" mentality, that you can't have when having in-house engine like they used to (or Gureilla with Decima, or Ubisoft with Anvil, or Rockstar with RAGE), but UE5 is not really optimal engine for open world games, and I really wish they kept on with improving REDEngine instead of switching to UE.

Apparently they said the demo was on base PS5. He had a PS5 controller on his hand but I think that might have been hooked up to a high end PC. 

Yeah, I heard them mentioning a base PS5 as well. It may well have been. Rendering 720p and utilizing immense amounts of upscaling, it's certainly possible to run games on older hardware with enough software aid.

It's baffling to me how UE5 has exasperated almost all the issues it was supposed to solve.  

I saw a video of a former Rockstar dev say that he can tell that a scene from the GTA6 trailer (which had amazing physics) was gameplay.

Considering that, which might be more impressive than what was shown in the Witcher 4 tech demo, maybe there's hope?
But after initially being a bit optimistic, I'm now not expecting Witcher 4 to look like that.

And probably not GTA 6 either. But I feel like out of the two, GTA 6 is more likely to be closer, given the developer's track record.

Well, it worked for Clair Obscur dev team, I doubt they'd have pulled that off without that engine, though that oberworld map is very blurry and unstable which is really odd cause it doesn't exactly look taxing even if it was clear. Perhaps AAA devs aren't able to use it and devs are just using older techniques and not using UE5 correctly, like a skill issue, they attempt to builds things in the way they've always done and we get messes because they won't or can't do what epic design the engine to do in the way they intended.

Clair Obscur does some amazing things with art direction, but the game itself is not open-world, nor does it aim for photo-realism in its visuals. I think it's a gorgeous game though, the best looking of the year, along with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. 

Some have talked about what you mention; all the built-in functionality of UE5 is hampering it due to developers relying too heavily on it and missing out on actual tailoring and adaptation. So many games come out looking the same via the engine, which indicates that most use the basic assets and functions. In so doing, they're foregoing specific adaptions and adjustments to platforms and hardware, forcing the engine itself to brute-force most of the work. Again, this was touted as perhaps the greatest strengths of the engine, and has become one of its biggest pitfalls. 

My biggest gripe with UE as it stands is that all the issues are offloaded onto the end-user, while the developers saves/cashes in, and Epic gets exposure and royalties flowing. It's a very anti-consumer situation, and will cause major harm to the industry, or at least developer - player relations.  

Go back and look at Cyberpunk previews as is the case with The Witcher 4, I do not believe it one bit. They may surprise but I very much doubt it. I suspect they are over promising again. I hope I'm wrong.

It's doable from the perspective that it's still a game that is still years from being released... I wouldn't be surprised if it's 2027 or 2028 that it comes out.

Which means it may land on Xbox Series X2 and Playstation 6 as a cross-gen title.