Epic Games originally showcased the Samaritan Tech Demo for Unreal Engine 3 in 2011. That tech demo used to its fullest the raw power of PC GPUs and looked phenomenal. And now, after over a decade, this tech demo still looks great.
Earlier this month, YouTube’s ‘8K Games’ decided to upscale this tech demo in 4K. The demo was originally captured at 720p, and by today’s standards, it looks awful. Thanks to AI tools, however, the YouTuber was able to remaster this video in 4K. And boy does it still hold up. From its atmosphere to the sheer amount of polygons on characters, everything still looks top-notch.
I don’t get why Epic Games hasn’t released its older tech demos. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to run the Samaritan tech demo on their PC? I bet everyone’s curious to see how this demo performs on their PCs. Can GPUs like the RTX4090 run it at 8K?
In the 90s, NVIDIA and AMD were bundling tech demos with their GPUs. Those demos showed off advanced techniques and gave us a sneak peek into the future of gaming. However, nowadays, only Futuremark and Unity still release new tech demos. It’s kind of strange that NVIDIA, which used to be known for its amazing tech demos, doesn’t do it anymore. In June 2023, NVIDIA surprised us with a fantastic tech demo using Unreal Engine 5. It had amazing graphics that any PC fan would love to see on their screens. Sadly, you can’t download it. And what happened to the NVIDIA Racer RTX? It was supposed to become available in November 2022. However, there is still no download for it.
Speaking of older Unreal Engine tech demos, I’d also love to see some others being remastered in 4K. Specifically, I’d love to see the Unreal Engine 2 Tech Demo. Or the E3 2004 GoW UE3 Tech Demo. Man… Gears of War and Samaritan were in the same engine… that’s… wait for it… Unreal.
Anyway, enjoy the video!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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