 Hey there lads and ladies, it is Petrifying Pumpkins and I am back with a Firewall Ultra video courtesy of this behind me. My hands are cut off. But you can see it's the Unreal Engine 5 interview that Unreal did with First Contact Entertainment, primarily focusing on Firewall Ultra. There's a few snippets about Solaris Offward Combat 2 as well, which is upcoming and was recently leaked and then confirmed. But the majority of this would be focusing on Firewall Ultra. Now this came out a few days ago. Unfortunately, I was busy so I wasn't able to cover it until now. But I've been itching to get into us and talk about some juicy details that we have here. So let's just dig right into us and we'll tackle them as we go along. So Firewall Ultra uses Unreal Engine 5 to evolve the viewer-shooter franchise on PlayStation VR 2. Now the highlights of this stuff that I think is, you know, the most interesting. So we're not going to go apiece, but this is a very long kind of interview, so I don't want to go into all of us. But this is from Mike Williams and I don't think it says who on First Contact Entertainment they're talking to here. But if I find that out, I will add that into this video. So the very first question they ask is, for the uninitiated, what is Firewall Ultra? I've highlighted this part here, groups of four, just in case some people were thinking maybe they've upped the player counter or whatever. We do have confirmation that Firewall Ultra will be teams of four maximum. So the next question then is basically how does Firewall Ultra raise the bar over Firewall Zero Hour? So I've highlighted here that the entire visual approach has been retooled with a focus on detailed real-time lightning and all of the gameplay has been extensively refined to take advantage of the PSVR 2 hardware. So I highlighted that because it's the first indication we get of real-time lightning. This is something that's going to pop up again and again during this interview. They're putting a big focus on how cool basically that the lightning system they have in this game is and that was made possible by Unreal Engine 5, essentially. For example, there is extensive use of eye tracking in the game, sometimes in subtle ways to add detail and control to key interactions. And then that's another big thing. Of course, we've already seen them show off how eye tracking works and they will talk about this shortly as well. We've seen that the weapon wheel selection, you can control that with your eyes. We've seen how the grenades can be thrown or aimed with your eyes, I should say. And now that we've all had, well, not everyone, but if you have a PSVR 2 and if you've played Horizon Call of the Mountain, for example, you know yourself. I know myself how quick and responsive that eye tracking is. It is maybe one of the best features of the PSVR 2. It's certainly got a huge amount of potential and it sounds like Firewall Ultra is really going to take advantage of that, which is great to me. So this next one now I've noticed in my own Discord community that this is a bit of a controversial one, I think. So the question is, can you talk about the different weapons slash loadouts First Contact have it developed for the game? We have pushed VR weapons to the next level. So here's the key point of Highlight Zips. No longer do you need additional peripherals and you can basically see that as a direct comment on the aim or whatever third party stuff comes out. We have developed a brand new concept for aim downsides, which is commonly known as ADS, which mimics and improves on the familiar 2D functionality for ADS. It's so natural, you often don't even realize what is happening behind the scenes to make it feel so good. Now we don't know what this is exactly. Nobody has seen this in action, so we don't know for certain what they're talking about. However, with Resident Evil A after coming out, it does sound like it is similar to the system that they have in place there where basically you're using two handed weapons or even a hang on whatever. You bring it up to your face and once you get close to your eye, your face, it does this thing where it snaps. It snaps to the headset kind of and then it's tracking your front arm. So it doesn't really matter what your back arm is doing. And the reason for this will be to compensate for the lack of aim controller because if you're playing Pavlov, if you're playing the Light Brigade, you know there's plenty of games out there now where you've got two handed weapons and you're using two motion controllers and your aim and your gun and maybe this is out of whack with this and it just doesn't feel as good as the aim controller does slash did. So it seems that first contact entertainment, they recognized that this was an issue, they recognized that something should be done about us. So they've come along with a software based solution because look, we're not getting an aim to at least not in time for whenever ultra comes out, it seems. So maybe the next best alternative for them was to do what the Resident Evil Ace has done. Now of course this pure speculation, it sounds like it's similar to what they're doing but they could have a completely different take on this, I don't know. So what does that mean? Basically it will make it easier to aim down sights, less wobble, less jank, you know, on the flip side of this and the people I've seen who have not been happy about this feel that it takes away the control. It takes away basically a unique part of what makes a viewer weapon a viewer weapon to wield that you have to that you have to you know align the back size with the front size of the gun and it takes that little bit of skill away. Now as always I am going to sit in the fence and I'm going to say I don't really know what they're going to do, I want to see it, I want to experience it myself, I played an hour of Resident Evil 8 software and in the tutorial I did notice that kind of snapping up kind of thing I was like what's going on here I don't really, my brain didn't register what was happening but it was never like I hate this you know I never got that I haven't really heard many people complaining about that yet if big if once again if that is what is happening so it is something I want to give first contact interested in it the benefits of the doubts I don't want to be jumping to conclusions I don't want to jump to conclusions basically for all I know I love us and considering we cannot have an aim controller you know maybe it is the next best thing because there are times in Pavlov you know not often not awful often getting better more practice the better I'm getting but there are times when my hands are not lined up correctly and I get a little bit frustrated so you can imagine when you're in the tense game of firewall and firewall is a more tactical tense you don't want to be having any kind of basic issues like that I mean even with firewall zero hour the aim controller what it felt amazing the tracking was not perfect it was still using the light based tracking how many times do we have the drift how many times do we have to shake the aim controller to get it to track correctly yet if this eliminates that kind of frustration any kind of controller based frustration then I'm definitely going to give the shot you know but anyway that is like one of the biggest talking points about this whole article I think so let me know your thoughts in the comments about this particular point and we can we can discuss or feel free to join the discord as well and have a chat about there so the next part here is a question about eye tracking as you can see I've highlighted basically the entire response because I feel like the whole thing is important so they're asking how will firewall ultra make use of eye track there is the weapon select wheel which we've seen which is a UI element that allows you to switch weapons by looking at them and the mechanic for aim and grenade throws so we've seen both of those already those are really the tip of the iceberg as the entire experience has been designed to leverage eye tracking in subtle but helpful ways which is the way I think eye tracking is going to work best is when it's little subtle things that maybe it's like it's selecting things in the menu it sounds boring it sounds really boring it's those little things that when they work fluidly and you notice that they're working it's like wow that's magic from the menus to some of the detailed nuances of our aiming mechanics players can harness the immediacy of looking to solve gameplay interactions we're very excited by the potential to use eye tracking in non-obvious ways ways that just make something that is inherently difficult without other physical feedback and make it feel natural in a viewer environment this technology is going to pay huge dividends for not only firewall ultra but all of our future projects as well such as solaris off-world combat 2 which we just teased so there's confirmation that solaris 2 is going to be extensively using uh the same technology that they're going to be put into firewall ultra the eye tracking technology basically so the next question is can you talk about the way's first contact is leveraging what the PlayStation viewer 2's hardware has to offer a skip down here a little bit to we are using a deferred renderer for firewall ultra as opposed to the more common forward rendering found in many viewer applications so i was like what's deferred rendering what's forward rendering i don't know let me get on to uh a chat ai i said explain it like i'm fine what's the difference basically and he says he or she it says in computer graphics forward rendering is like drawing each object in order when deferred rendering is like collecting information about the objects first and then drawing them all together deferred rendering can be more efficient for certain types of pictures and pictures in this case will be game so it sounds like this deferred rendering technique is a way for them to gain efficiency and they free up some resources based on what chat GPT has told me so this has opened up approaches to lighting and material surfaces that really show off the improved resolution and hd or performances so because of this deferred rendering technique we are going to get enhanced visuals and you know the hd or the colors and all that kind of stuff it's gonna be it sounds like it's gonna be you know top tier stuff triple a stuff so then they were asked about ray tracing support and while they don't say yes or no which to me says you know maybe no they do go into detail about lighting basically because of this so there is considerable real-time lighting in ultra and that's been an explicit focus for us i'm just going to say that wielding a true real-time shadow casting flashlights in virtual reality is an incredibly powerful and immersive tool and i've been saying this for months that for whatever reason flashlights is something that has me really excited and it sounds like a stupid thing it sounds like a small little thing but that's going to be one of those things especially what accurately cast in lights i mean you're talking about eight flashlights eight flashlights all of them cast in shadows you can make finger puppets you can do kind of stuff like that you can give away your position you know there's a lot of things you could do with that and that could really change the feel something so small as a flashlight attachment could really change a firewall ultra plays compared to firewall zero hour can you talk about how first contact implemented the sophisticated real-time lighting and what it brings to the table so let's skip down here there are two keys ways we leverage real-time lighting and both benefit the player enormously the first is to reward player actions with robust effects so this can be the flashlights muzzle flashes explosions etc that makes the combat feel so much more intense and immersive and we all know well not all of us but if you have a psv or two you know that that thing can get bright somebody to sadly it's Bradley who is a viewer analyst but he took a test measurement of the light and how bright they can outpost on a psv or two and he tested as like 265 nits nits is a units of measurement for lights basically and you compare that with the quest pro which is cost 1500 dollars well this doesn't anymore but it did cost 1500 dollars like a few days ago and that was only like 100 nits or something like that so this is producing the brightest rights of any headset i think so when you keep that in mind and you think you're firing a gun think of the muzzle flash bang grenades you know explosions all that stuff combine that with hdr as well where you got really black blacks and then poppin with all these bright effects maybe you'll die from a seizure maybe but if it happens it happens you can die happy knowing that the rest of us are having a fantastic time being immersed in like poppin colorful lights and all this kind of stuff the other is to use real-time lights for dramatic effect in the environment with environmental lights we generally look for opportunities to use lights to help players understand the environment better or for situations where light might be a tactical consideration so this is something i was theorizing about in the past where maybe you could shoot out lights and stuff like that to create dark areas for more stealthy approaches and whatnot but then they say by that we mean you may need to be aware of lights and or shadow to gain the upper hand so they don't confirm or deny that maybe you can interact with light sources that are already on the map like maybe turn off generators to cut the power of an area whatever that would be cool but lights in general is going to be something you have to consider so they're asked to elaborate on the advanced materials they talked about so basically from the weapon you are holding in your hands to every surface your flashlight reflects off you will notice tinypox scares scratches etc so i think you can expect firewall ultra to be visually a generational leap over firewall zero hour and i really liked firewall zero hour visually i thought when you held the gun to your face in firewall zero hour it was like enough to mason real life but they're adding to us it's going to get crazy so then they're asked about how they're implementing hdr high dynamic range which means you know basically brights or brights dark or darks so for ultra our first principle for the game was lice slash dark gameplay so this was like a design principle that they had in mind that they were going to base it around lice and dark so having a consistent and high quality hdr screen is essential for this more than in any flat game we can be confident of the black levels and lean into the detail far more heavily why is that important because when you're playing any other game the developers don't know what kind of television you're playing on so because of that they have to you know take it easy when it comes to the hdr in certain certain scenarios whereas with firewall ultra first contact entertainment know exactly what kind of screen you're going to be using everyone's got OLEDs everyone's got hdr everyone has the fresnel lenses that allows for hdr OLED to take place so they can design the game with that in mind in terms of how they light levels and stuff like that so firewall ultra can be truly bespoke as they say on digital foundry for the ps4 or two so i highlight this question not really for the answer but basically because it's an interest in fact i thought first contact entertainment built firewall ultra using unreal engine 5 making it not only one of the first viewer games to use the engine but also one of the earliest unreal engine 5 games period so i think that's important not only is like a cool achievement for first contact entertainment but something we should keep in mind as we're waiting for this that they're working with a brand new engine that not many other people have been worked well a few other people are working with it of course but everyone's kind of you know figuring things out as they go along especially when you take into account that they're also making a virtual reality game in unreal engine 5 and that narrows you know how many other people they can ask for help and want us to even horizon call of the mountain was unreal engine but i think it was only unreal engine 4 so first contact you know breaking new ground basically with this game and when they were asked why they used unreal engine 5 is one of the answers it's the focus on light and again we're talking about light and again and again so particularly forward thinking real time approaches that were most intriguing additionally we see firewall ultra as principally a live game a game that lives for several years now this shouldn't be too shocking but it's nice to get confirmation that they do plan on supporting this game in the long term we know that they probably will because firewall zero hour was supported for four years you know four and a half years something like that and of course unreal engine five will allow them for future proofing so whether it's a future proofing our engine choice was an important factor so things that don't work in vr now and unreal engine five maybe in a year or two they will work maybe first contact can put a patch out to activate certain features or whatnot and then all of a sudden they breathe some new life into firewall ultra two years down the line or something pure speculation of course but so then they jump back this interview is a little bit out of order i feel it's got a little bit all over the place but the question here is firewall ultra uses a fully deferred rendering pipeline which is the thing we already talked about with chat gpt which is rare for a viewer title how does this benefit the game and what challenges presented themselves going this route so first contact responded with the biggest benefits is the fidelity and authenticity of the surfaces of objects so again stuff is going to look real nice it's going to stand up to inspection basically because in virtual reality you're going to be looking at things more than you would be in a flat game most of the time so that's really nice to hear that they're taking that into account it's not something that folks are always going to focus on but especially with real-time lighting the environment just feels that bit more immersive or countries one of the most immediate things players will notice is the crazy amount of detail that the weapons display it's one thing looking at a weapon from the same rear-facing view in a flat game and an entirely different experience when you are literally holding us in your hands again everything's going to feel real feel grounded high details going to stand up to virtual reality so this last point i thought was a little bit interesting because it touches on the pve and if you follow their twitter account you might notice that they've been kind of teasing that they're tested the pve right now and that maybe it's more enhanced over firewall zero hour that they've improved in some ways so the question is whether any unreal engine tools or features that were helpful in developing firewall ultra and the answer is okay this isn't obvious from a viewer perspective but we've been using environment query system so then i was like what is this we look it up environment query system is a feature within the artificial intelligence system in unreal engine 4 that is used to collect data from the environment now of course it says unreal engine 4 but we can assume it's unreal engine 5 as well obviously eqs queries can be used to instruct ai characters to find the best possible location that will provide a line of size to a player in order to attack the nearest health or ammo pickup or where the closest cover point among other possibilities so with that in mind we've been using eqs extensively in our pve mode it's allowed us to craft an almost endless variety of encounters with a highly efficient scenario setup so that sounds fascinating to me if you play pve on firewall zero hour it's basically you and up to three friends who total of four up against kind of endless wave bots until you hack a laptop it was fun you could have fun with that and sometimes it was hard but more or less you knew when a bot was going to do something or you know they kind of they kind of just ran towards you basically but with this they're talking about an endless variety of encounters with a highly efficient scenario setup maybe they can be more detailed just maybe the ai's don't just rush towards you now maybe they are more intelligent do more interesting things have more tactics available to them and spice it up a little bit and finally our pve mode has been rebuilt extended refined polished and all of that's in comparison to firewall zero hour so there is an emphasis an improvement and a lot of consideration going into the pve mode for firewall ultra so i'm becoming more interested in that as we get closer to the launch of firewall ultra whenever that is and of course they're asked when is that coming out and the answer is laser this year which we knew already we knew it was coming 2023 we just don't know when but hopefully we get some kind of information very very soon of course there's always rumors of a sony showcase or whatever so keep in mind this is a sony first party title so if there is a showcase it's a good chance that firewall ultra is released today could be revealed at it and so that is the end of the interview between unreal and first contact entertainment let me know in the comments your thoughts on this entire interview or if there's anything in particular that stood out or maybe there was something here that i didn't go into detail on that you think i should have feel free to bring that up and maybe it's something i can talk about in a future firewall ultra video if you like this content if you want to learn more about firewall ultra if you want to see firewall ultra streams when the game comes out or just psv or two in general then be sure to hit subscribe like all the usual youtube and shies i don't like to ask i don't like to say let me thank decepticon for letting me use his music in all of my videos thank you as always for watching petrifying pumpkins and i'll see you in the next one please stay nice and moist