Project M – NCSOFT presents an upcoming game powered by Unreal Engine 5. Taking digital people to the next level

The South Korean company NCSOFT is primarily engaged in the creation of MMORPGs. At the ongoing GDC 2023 event, they just revealed a new game they’re working on. The trailer from “Project M” shows the company’s latest technological breakthroughs in creating digital people. The game will be based on a new graphics engine from Epic Games – Unreal Engine 5. In turn, it is intended to debut on consoles.

At the GDC 2023 event, NCSOFT presented a trailer for a new game called Project M. Its main distinguishing feature is the technology used to create digital people and the game is based on Unreal Engine 5.

Unreal Engine 5.2 – A technical demo of the latest version of the graphics engine was shown at GDC 2023

NCSOFT is known for titles like Aion, Lineage, or Blade & Soul. This time the company decided to focus more on advanced characters and the use of technological innovations. At the beginning of the trailer, we see a digitally created character of Creative Director (CCO) Taekjin Kim. The technology itself that uses AI algorithms has a lot of potential. The character’s voice was created entirely by a synthesizer, with the original accent and emotions in mind. When you watch the video, you have to admit that it was well done. Recently, one of our readers in the Unreal Engine 5 thread mentioned that after viewing the possibilities, it’s now time to “lip sync to audio (different languages) without having to create textures for each character individually”. As it turns out, we didn’t have to wait long, because this feature is here, too.

AMD FSR 2.2 is now available as a plug-in for the Unreal Engine

The fully digitally generated face is based on proprietary Voice-to-Face technology. Not only are facial expressions and associated facial animation generated automatically, algorithms adjust mouth movements to the spoken words. It will certainly (but not only) contribute to the faster development of video games. It is also possible to change the course of the story depending on our choices in the game. NCSOFT calls Project M its “most ambitious project to date.” For its implementation, 3D scanning technology, VFX effects and motion capture are used. At the moment, an approximate release date has not been set. However, a game using such technologies can be expected to turn out to be a demonstration of current capabilities at worst.

Source: TechPowerUp