Unity has grown from a relatively simple engine to one of the most flexible options available for developers, allowing everything from 2D platformers to 3D games and short cinematics, all rendered in real-time, in-engine. The new Heretic real-time demo, showcased at GDC 2019, is one such example of a 3D engine being used to render a breathtaking cinematic.

The Heretic builds upon learnings derived from both the Adam and Book of the Dead shorts, and take advantage of the latest technologies embedded into the Unity engine. Motion blur, bloom, depth of field, film grain, color grading, and Panini projection, including by real-time lights and usage of a probe-based lighting solution. Just take a look at the video yourself, right after the break, and read on for the other part of this Unity-related piece: the Megacity Tech Demo.
Besides launching part one of their heretic real-time demo, which Unity says will be released in full sometime in the future, the company has also made available for download their incredible Megacity tech demo, which they had already revealed back in October of 2018. Aiming to showcase a cyberpunk/futuristic setting not very unlike Cyberpunk 2077, the Megacity tech demo makes use of 4.5 million mesh renderers, 5000 dynamic vehicles and 200,000 unique building objects. The vehicles fly on spline-based traffic lanes, never colliding, and there are 100,000 unique audio sources, including neon signs, air-conditioning fans, and cars. You can now run this incredible tech demo right on your PC, with no compression quality loss. Be advised though: it's a 7.1 GB download, and performance will definitely vary.