I dont like Unreal engine graphics
Posted: 29 Jan 2026, 03:53
Unreal is a constant tech demo or a promise for better graphics. The engine itself requires almost the equivalent of a full university course to be utilized. Almost no games use the power of unreal engine. What is good about UE5 is that it allows you to grow artistic skills with very high limits so you may even feel there are no limits. But limits will arrive, dont be fooled. One limit for example is that you have a hard time knowing all the areas of the engine, but you can do it it just takes a great effort and a big brain. Regardless of that I wanted to discuss about realism.
When we see the improvements in graphics we notice all games start to look the same. The color are the same, everything looks the same. Seems like the evolution of the concept of "realism" is guiding us to think it is whatever imitates life from a youtube video.
In the case of unreal engine 5 games, when I look them I feel like its a shit version of real life. Its like looking at a youtube video but the game is all buggy with cropped animations that are done poorly. You feel like is half-assed "reality".
What informs my brains of the idea of "realism" is the color grading. Since colors in these newer games are very realistic, my brain gets tricked and thinks for an instant it is a footage from a camera. But as soon as I see the laggy gaming animations I get a brain stuttering and I think "this is wrong". In a nutshell it feels to me like a half-true reality that breaks my own brain and confuses me. I experience a continuity between media. Games look similar to youtube videos, and this does not allows me to separate enough to enter a fantasy. Fantasy and reality are being made in a way such that they are very close to one another.
I dont get projected into an imaginary world instead I am into an imitation of "reality" that makes me stutter. Unreal 3 feels like "a world or a story itself". Unreal 5 feels like "point a camera at the world". So when they pretend UE5 is "reality" it will make my brain fatigue and consume more energy, because now I have to fill too many gaps, such as justifying the absurd blur, the artifacts occurring due to generated frames, an inconsistency due to animation quality varying too much within the same frame. Behaviors are all unpredictable. Reality collapses and breaks itself still maintaining at least a semblance of "realism" due to the color grading choices.
Before, when games had a stylized graphics I did not have fill gaps or pretend is real. I could just inhabit the world of the game. My internal reality engine (my human brain) would be engaged in another task: immerse into a world. As if a game was a story from a book or comics.
Instead photoreal rendering and videogame animation collide to break the "reality experience" in UE5. Because you have elements of "reality" (realism is youtube footage in this discussion), and elements that break reality. Its like a story is contradicting itself in between every 2 sentences. You follow a story, but the story keeps breaking or shifting all the time.
You will see 1 crop from the game and think "wow this is real footage" or feel a bit of brain-stuttering as if you are still evaluating if the footage is real or not. But then youre like "wait a minute, humans dont move like that". And then "what, why everything is sliding popping and moving like that?"
You get cognitive dissonance the game trains you to become retarded basically. Because PBR pipelines push everyone toward the same material response in every render engine. Quixel megascans are literally everywhere. Lumen is not yet fully adopted by everyone but what it would do is favor soft indirect light which creates grey/brown midtones (more realistic but sucks terribly). Filmic tonemappers will emulate real cameras, you see everything with colder tones that feel "washed out" kinda the same issue there is in digital cinema. "washed out" colors are also considered the pinnacle of realism in many porn animation projects and they banned me in various communities for pointing that out. This belief in "realism "seems to have convinced a ton of people. Luckily is changing, I see a lot of new pornmakers who dont do it realistic.
Youre going to get similar skin tones, similar environments if not the same ones from game to game, similar lighting moods (its going to be quite rare you get a custom mood). And the idea of "realism" is going to be about "overcast realism" or "camera realism". The issue I have is my brain is engaged in a job of "filling gaps" way more than I would have if I had to read a book or play an old title with UE3. Because in UE3 you just enter a world, your imagination almost runs the entire game. This was my TLDR.
I conclude my shitpost saying I prefer UE3. And UE4 kinda ruined it.
When we see the improvements in graphics we notice all games start to look the same. The color are the same, everything looks the same. Seems like the evolution of the concept of "realism" is guiding us to think it is whatever imitates life from a youtube video.
In the case of unreal engine 5 games, when I look them I feel like its a shit version of real life. Its like looking at a youtube video but the game is all buggy with cropped animations that are done poorly. You feel like is half-assed "reality".
What informs my brains of the idea of "realism" is the color grading. Since colors in these newer games are very realistic, my brain gets tricked and thinks for an instant it is a footage from a camera. But as soon as I see the laggy gaming animations I get a brain stuttering and I think "this is wrong". In a nutshell it feels to me like a half-true reality that breaks my own brain and confuses me. I experience a continuity between media. Games look similar to youtube videos, and this does not allows me to separate enough to enter a fantasy. Fantasy and reality are being made in a way such that they are very close to one another.
I dont get projected into an imaginary world instead I am into an imitation of "reality" that makes me stutter. Unreal 3 feels like "a world or a story itself". Unreal 5 feels like "point a camera at the world". So when they pretend UE5 is "reality" it will make my brain fatigue and consume more energy, because now I have to fill too many gaps, such as justifying the absurd blur, the artifacts occurring due to generated frames, an inconsistency due to animation quality varying too much within the same frame. Behaviors are all unpredictable. Reality collapses and breaks itself still maintaining at least a semblance of "realism" due to the color grading choices.
Before, when games had a stylized graphics I did not have fill gaps or pretend is real. I could just inhabit the world of the game. My internal reality engine (my human brain) would be engaged in another task: immerse into a world. As if a game was a story from a book or comics.
Instead photoreal rendering and videogame animation collide to break the "reality experience" in UE5. Because you have elements of "reality" (realism is youtube footage in this discussion), and elements that break reality. Its like a story is contradicting itself in between every 2 sentences. You follow a story, but the story keeps breaking or shifting all the time.
You will see 1 crop from the game and think "wow this is real footage" or feel a bit of brain-stuttering as if you are still evaluating if the footage is real or not. But then youre like "wait a minute, humans dont move like that". And then "what, why everything is sliding popping and moving like that?"
You get cognitive dissonance the game trains you to become retarded basically. Because PBR pipelines push everyone toward the same material response in every render engine. Quixel megascans are literally everywhere. Lumen is not yet fully adopted by everyone but what it would do is favor soft indirect light which creates grey/brown midtones (more realistic but sucks terribly). Filmic tonemappers will emulate real cameras, you see everything with colder tones that feel "washed out" kinda the same issue there is in digital cinema. "washed out" colors are also considered the pinnacle of realism in many porn animation projects and they banned me in various communities for pointing that out. This belief in "realism "seems to have convinced a ton of people. Luckily is changing, I see a lot of new pornmakers who dont do it realistic.
Youre going to get similar skin tones, similar environments if not the same ones from game to game, similar lighting moods (its going to be quite rare you get a custom mood). And the idea of "realism" is going to be about "overcast realism" or "camera realism". The issue I have is my brain is engaged in a job of "filling gaps" way more than I would have if I had to read a book or play an old title with UE3. Because in UE3 you just enter a world, your imagination almost runs the entire game. This was my TLDR.
I conclude my shitpost saying I prefer UE3. And UE4 kinda ruined it.