There’s nothing better than a big storm to add plenty of foreboding atmosphere to a scene. Batman: Arkham Knight, for example, was set in a perpetually rainy sandbox – it was depressing, but it suited the miserable mood of Rocksteady’s game. How good could thunder and lightning look on PlayStation 5, then? Real good if this Unreal Engine 4 tech demo is anything to go by.

Despite looking like it would require a server farm to run, it’s actually being powered by a fairly modest graphics card in an NVidia GTX 970. So could we see these kind of effects on next-gen hardware? Well, you have to take into account that this is a fairly restricted demo – adding a storm like this to a modern open world title (with other characters, physics, and logic) would probably lead to compromises.

That said, the PS5 is sounding seriously supercharged, and this is a good indication of the kind of thing that may be possible on the console. If nothing else, it’s a reminder that, while games look great on the PS4, there’s still so much more that could be achieved with updated hardware. Expect your eyes to melt when you see what the likes of Guerrilla Games have been up to.

[source youtube.com]