Three nVidia GTX 580 in SLI – that’s what it took to reach the high end capabilities of the new Unreal engine, unveiled today at Game Developers Conference. Epic’s VP Mark Rein clearly pointed out that the demonstration is way above the technical capabilities of the current console generation and added that “this this is our proposal for what the next generation of gaming is going to be. […] The whole idea behind this is to tell the hardware manufacturers that this is what you should be doing down the road.”

The demo used to demonstrate the new engine’s capabilities focused on a grim superhero character set against the background of a highly detailed, Sci-Fi, gloomy city, slumped in heavy rain and lid by neon lights. Even though it ran entirely on the Unreal engine, the extraordinary details, the fluid animations and the complex physics involved in the presentation suggested a carefully directed and executed CG movie.

This NOT Unreal 4, Rein clarified, but he added that if the engine were to have a number it would be Unreal 3.975. It was also noted that the differences between this and Unreal 3 are significantly larger than the ones between Unreal 2 and Unreal 3. “Another thing that’s awesome,” added Rein “is that the engine now scales all the way from an iPhone 3GS up to next-generation hardware. That means you could theoretically make a game that’d run on every single one of these devices. Mobile phones to tablets to set top boxes.”

With new DirectX 11 components, the demo featured sub-surface scattering, shadow point light reflections and bokeh depth of field, all of them apparently already available to those with hands on Unreal licenses.

In the end Rein threw down the glove stating: “If the next game consoles can’t do this, well, Apple increased their iPad by nine times today.”