Layers of Fear Tech Q&A – Anshar Studios Talks Shipping the First UE5 Third-Party Game with Lumen on Spotlight
Over three years after the stunning Unreal Engine 5 debut tech demo, the Layers of Fear remake is finally about to claim the unique 'prize' of being the first third-party game built using the new version of Epic's premiere game development engine. Epic Games updated Fortnite long ago to support Unreal Engine 5; more recently, they also enhanced the visuals thanks to the signature UE5 features, Lumen and Nanite. Outside of that, however, Layers of Fear will be the first UE5 game to ship on the market, following several delays of potential competitors.
This remake, which includes the first two games in the series as well as a brand new story, has been co-developed by Bloober Team and Anshar Studios (Gamedec). With the game's release date set for next week, I had the chance to interview Anshar's Programmer Krzysztof Kansy and Technical Artist Michał Gawron to discuss the implementation of UE5's Lumen technology, the console specs, and the newly announced MacOS version optimized for Apple Silicon.
To read our first impressions of the Layers of Fear remake, head to Francesco's hands-on preview.
How does it feel to be shipping the first third-party Unreal Engine 5 game on the market?
Krzysztof Kansy, programmer: Shipping a new technology is always an exciting challenge. In previous cooperation between Anshar Studios and Bloober Team on “Observer: System Redux,” we were among the first titles on the latest generation of consoles, so it is not our first time to take on such a challenge.
And just as in previous cases of working with new technology, there is a lot to learn, a lot of planning and adjusting as we go. And as usual, there were things that went surprisingly smoothly and obstacles that we didn’t see coming. Nevertheless, the overall experience was very satisfying, and we are happy with the outcome.
Which version of UE5 are you using for Layers of Fear?
Krzysztof Kansy: Currently we are using UE 5.1. There are some plans for the 5.2 upgrade, but we still need to do some research on that.
From a usability perspective, did UE5 meet your expectations? Does it speed up the workload?
Michał Gawron, technical artist: Definitely, yes. Working in Unreal Engine 5 is fast and very enjoyable. In the case of speed of work, Lumen is a great improvement. Thanks to it, we saw the effects immediately, without the need to bake the lights for several hours.
In a recent showcase video, you highlighted the Lumen system, one of UE5's major innovations, as critical for improving the visuals over the original. Can you talk about your experience with Lumen and the specifics of your implementation?
Michał Gawron: Using Lumen was an obvious decision in a game that relies on light and shadow. This allowed us to create fully dynamic lighting that reacts to in-game events. Of course, implementing Lumen was a big challenge as we had to learn how to get the most out of this technology. Ultimately, we are happy with the result, and we hope that players will also feel the difference.
Ray tracing is also listed as a feature. Which effects are ray-traced in Layers of Fear?
Michał Gawron: We use Lumen's ray tracing features which improve the quality of Global Illumination and Reflections.
The Niagara VFX system is another UE feature you have previously mentioned. How did it help level up the visual presentation of your game?
Michał Gawron: Using Niagara allowed us to create more complex effects that can contain more particles. Compared to the older system, we were able to create exactly what we wanted without compromising on quality and performance.
Does Layers of Fear also support Nanite? If not, why?
Michał Gawron: We didn't implement Nanite because our game does not require that. Nanite is more useful when it comes to solving open world rendering. Meanwhile, Layers of Fear is a story taking place indoors, in a labyrinth of an old manor or a ship, with a strange and claustrophobic atmosphere.
How do the console versions compare to PC in terms of graphics settings and features like Lumen, Niagara, and ray tracing?
Michał Gawron: On consoles, we use the same graphics settings and features as on PC. There is a full Lumen implementation with Ray Tracing and Niagara support.
Can you share the target resolution and frame rates on consoles and whether multiple presets (quality, performance, etc.) are available to users?
Michał Gawron: On consoles, the player will have the choice of Quality or Performance mode. Quality is a hardware ray tracing mode with the highest graphics settings at 4K and 30 fps. Performance is 60 fps mode with dynamic resolution up to 1440p with lower graphics quality. For XSS, we offer 60 fps in Performance mode with additional optimizations.
The Layers of Fear demo supports UE's TSR, NVIDIA DLSS, and Intel XeSS. Are you also going to add AMD FSR at some point?
Krzysztof Kansy: We are currently working on AMD FSR integration. It will be available at the release of the game.
Unreal Engine has become a bit infamous due to the shader and/or traversal stuttering often encountered in games based on the technology. The Layers of Fear demo seems mostly free of that. How did you address this issue?
Krzysztof Kansy: Most of the stuttering in our game would be caused by Pipeline State Object generation during the gameplay – a common issue in different Unreal Engine games as you have mentioned, related to shaders. We are incorporating the PSO Cache system to mitigate this source of issues. It’s a built-in tool that allows us to gather relevant PSO information during development and cook it into the build. We can then generate and cache actual PSO in runtime beforehand instead of generating it during the gameplay.
Bloober Team released Layers of Fear VR a few years ago. Would it be technically feasible to optimize this UE5 version of the game to run on high-end PC VR and/or PS VR2, or would it require significant changes?
Michał Gawron: It's hard to say because we haven't worked on an earlier version of VR. But overall, the potential VR version of the new game will definitely need to go through some major changes.
You've just announced the Apple Silicon version of Layers of Fear. Was it hard to port the game to this different combination of hardware and software?
Michał Gawron: Working closely with Apple, the process went smoothly. Apple's involvement in the process was invaluable and the results are astounding.
Are you able to support the exact same features of the PC version (Lumen, Niagara, ray tracing), etc. in this version of the game? Are there any differences in rendering or performance that players should be aware of?
Michał Gawron: Yes, Layers of Fear on Mac is the same game as the PC version with no compromises on performance! The Mac version also supports Lumen global illumination and reflections system from the Unreal 5 engine as well as MetalFX Upscaling to boost performance and quality.
Thank you for your time.
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