Look what Epic can do with a mobile processor

Epic Games is staffed by sorcerers. It's the only explanation for the graphics performance it has managed to eke out of a mobile processor.

It helps that the processor in question is Nvidia's Tegra K1, which was described at reveal as having the power of a PS3 or Xbox 360 but with power consumption suitable to something you'd carry in your pocket all day.

Epic put this demo together in under three weeks, bringing assets across from its Samaritan demo - which was designed to showcase cutting-edge PC graphics back in 2011, but has already been surpassed by Unreal Engine 4.

The tech demo is running on Google I/O, running Epic's full desktop renderer with various fancy extensions; the video has more details on that if you're interested. That your mobile device can now render graphics of this quality is amazing, although of course we're looking at a cutscene, not in-game graphics - just like most cinematic tech demos, regardless of platform (interactive examples like the PSOne's T-Rex are the exception).

It's sort of amazing how powerful mobile devices are becoming; how many years do you think we have before there's little difference between your phone and your desktop?

Thanks, CVG.