To be fair, Epic wanted to have real-time global illumination for UE4. They even had a lot of the work done, but it just never quite made it. The performance impact was too great. I imagine several years later they've been able to deal with most of the issues, especially since we have a lot more computational power available.
I guess they go completely to the limit in their demos, so in actual games you will see it only after the next version of their engine has been released.
Look up E3 game demo's and their launched comparison on YouTube. You'll learn all the game trailers with 'real game play footage' are all fake. The whole industry is filled this.
I'm playing through Doom 2016 at the moment, and if anything, it looks even better than that. Could be Youtube compression, or they've added in graphical tweaks with the Vulkan update.
I always wondered if that dinosaur was using the 2MB of memory in the final retail unit, or 4MB often seen in arcade boards using the the PS1's technology.
I recall seeing it live in a devkit but I can't for the life of me remember the devkit specs. Note that that demo catered very expertly to the strengths of the PS1 hardware, it should run jut fine in a retail unit.
- Dinos were so in vogue and so suggesting of technological innovation. Jurassic Park came out what, 2-3 years earlier?
- Very limited z-sorting requirements, could likely be done with a simple bsp if sorting individual polys proved too taxing.
- Polys of fairly regular dimensions, not overly long in one direction. Helps with less visible sorting and clipping artifacts.
- No problem with lack of perspective correction, because textures are already shimmering due to the organic skin animation.
- That black fog has always been very effective. We love terrifying things emerging from the dark, which Doom3 tech proved again, and more recently VR.
Games are more than tech demos.