This engine looks so good.

It is becoming hard to differentiate real time render from real life.
And it looks like it is really quick for developers.

Can't wait to try out games with this engine.

In real life tree branches bend or break when you walk against them. Just one of those millions of not-unimportant details that need to be right to get the full illusion of reality.

if the pace is kept up soon we will reach there
still this is nearly realistic at least for the look

What's supposedly more realistic? I"m not seeing it... Is it the shadows? Like, they added ray tracing and i'm supposed to see realistic shadows? Lighting still looks off.

But, hey, i'm not one to complain about graphics, but i think this is overblown.

To be honest, not a lot of people jet pack up into the sky either... Yes, graphics are getting better, mostly as the hardware gets there to do it. My card is about the size of a laptop on its own (3080). Two things though, first fancy graphics are only as good as the artistry, modelling and such that goes into all the resources. Second graphics are not everything. I am playing days gone, and I reckon the graphics there are good enough. Have been taking pictures (and with AC also).

I don't know... it looks like those jetpackers are all hiding in forests.

And Los Angeles

Yes, it does look really astonishing.

My worry is that gameplay doesn't evolve at the same pace as the graphics are. I mean, how often do we have ideas or concepts like Minecraft emerging? We are wasting a lot of energy not only to develop amazing graphics but we literally burn energy just to play those amazing graphics as well. And for what? The sense of realism is gone when you can pick up infinite ammo and your weapon of choice can shoot infinite bullets without over-heating and jamming.

Old games often had glunky interface but there is a reason why there are so many reboots and remakes. Not to mention that some games are still playable and enjoyable the way they were made originally. In many genres the gameplay haven't evolved that much, if at all. Graphics sure can please the eye but if the game itself doesn't have anything else new then the graphics aren't making me buy anything. Rather the opposite. Quite often the developers invest lot to improve the graphics but gameplay stays the same. Or in some cases, they make it even worse.

I don't know. Maybe it's just me being grumpy or something.

What you are saying is the phrase “does a bear sht in the woods” is actually not what should be asked. Can’t see that, there are actually quite a few individuals around with jet pack technology. It’s not that unusual anymore. What is unusual is that Amazon haven’t invested in it as there new delivery method... No, I would agree. The rerelease of old games is an epidemic, across all media, driven by lack of creativity and fear of moving outside the given boundaries. It’s very evident in most walks of life now, don’t tow the line, you will be destroyed by the social media mobs. So everyone simply goes for the easy options.

Eh. As far as I'm concerned, game graphics have become good enough years ago. While I do appreciate some eye candy, it's gameplay I'm typically more concerned about.

That said, I'm more curious to see how Unreal will be used in future TV/movie production. That Mandalorian soundstage they were using for the vast majority (if not all?) of their filming was bonkers.

Do you blame 'em after the drones got canceled? Eh, i don't think the media is behind the trash gameplay. Certainly the content, but not the gameplay. What i see going on there is coporate capitalism, as opposed to capitalism. It's all about everyone's retirement and investment funds, and if you make an ambitious flop you don't just hurt your company, you end up sued into oblivion by investors. I don't believe for a minute that social media is that scary to a privately owned company. But, you see, if it's a public corporation, now you're responsible for alot more and the game you're forced to play (which is your own damn fault for getting your company into this game) just lends itself to this kind of trash.

As a developer what I think is that Unreal need to focus on the docs... last time I tried the engine (about 1 year ago) it was still a mess.
Unity is just amazing on that, you can start any day, try to do something and find the docs to both the way to do it and how to use the apis, updated to the last version.
And yes the fact the Unity also use C# (easier to write than C++ and my favourite programming language out there) and convert it to C++ at compile time to get the best of both world is just a plus not the main reason I stay on Unity (after all I just write scripts for the engine, it should be easy in C++ too, but the problem is the docs sucks so you need to find workaround).

Don't get me wrong I know engine try to "sell" on their light-shadow-real-life look, I'm just not really interested in that part. I only know how to write code for the logic of the game (make the character move by using the animator, move the camera, save the game, create the logic of the menu etc...) and I cannot really change that part (if the game looks like in real life or not) and I don't even care sometimes (in the end I think my style is more about cartoon and anime, I don't really like realistic style, still I will get 3D/2D artist to do the model for me and I will just get a shader that I like, I will not create one).

That's why I'm not really hyped about unreal engine 5. As a developer that wants to write code (not blueprints) I'm not even sure if I should test it another time... last time it was just a bad experience. The engine was slow on my laptop, the docs were not updated on the C++ part and I didn't really care about blueprints and when I tried to open Unity I was amazed by how many things I could do better.
In the video presentation of Unreal engine 5 I saw nothing for developers, if I cannot have fun by writing code there is no reason to use the engine, at least for me.

It does look good. It's coming to the stage when the biggest limitation in game graphics isn't the technology, it's the budget of the developers to make those textures.

Common, man, have you ever seen a properly documented engine (ok, other than maybe unity, and i only say that 'cause i have no experience with it). There's some talk in ISO about intentionally borking the C++ binary compatibility soon, so this could get really interesting really fast. I'm partial to dropping to C and writing my own engines, just to avoid all the upcomming fads that are going to result in alot of broken code and constant refactoring (as if it's not already bad enough). I understand it's harder, more work, etc, but i see smoke on the horizon.

Like I said, Unity. But also Godot engine (the main problem with that is that it still need work on many things... the last time I tried it I had to ctrl+alt+canc it so many times.... It really is not ready, but the docs is good).

Making your own engine is not impossible but doing it with cross-platform support and making it easy to use regardless of the game you want to create is really complicated.
The problem you describe is a nuisance, but unity for example when updating something tries to automatically correct the code or to suggest valid alternatives ... the only problem is that it only works well from one version to the immediately previous one so you have to update often the engine. If you are too far behind it becomes much more difficult to keep the code up to date.
Still I think that's the only way to do things even with other engines, you need to keep the code updated to the last version of everything.

There is one part I agree... I try to avoid to integrate 3rd-party code things on my game. Sometimes I need to rewrite the wheel but at least I can keep it updated with the engine and I don't need to wait for the update on the plugins part. The only 3rd-party thing that I have to use is the engine itself.
I used one for google drive (unitygoogledrive) for cloud saves, that still works but in the end I just created the same things on my own just to integrate the new PKCE code_challenge that was not compatible with Unitygoogledrive (it's great for security reason on desktop and mobile apps without a server, you don't need to use implicit grant anymore you can finally use code grant, and it should not require client_secret anymore (google still require it for reasons, but both dropbox and one drive do not require it). By doing that I was able to create the same thing for dropbox and one drive too.