Smoke Steals the Show from the Laser: UE5 Fluid Simulation Looks Great—Is $70 Worth It?

In an Unreal Engine 5 demo video, a first-person view holds an orange glowing laser gun and fires, with flames and smoke rolling in front and several cylindrical building structures in the background. A RedefineFX.com/megabundle watermark is displayed at the top of the frame. The poster, Mark Kretschmann, says the effect is amazing and hopes more games will use this kind of physics simulation for effects such as water and smoke.

In the comments, Dez thinks the most captivating part is the smoke, which is highly realistic. His take is that as hardware improves, physics-driven effects will become as important as high-resolution textures. OpenVibe is more blunt: the smoke is doing the marketing, and the laser is just pointing at it. It's a bit of a jab, but when watching the video, it's hard to argue—the smoke's motion and lighting are more eye-catching than the muzzle.

Others are concerned about cost. Mykyta Pavlenko asks whether this smoke runs within a game's real-time frame budget or was pre-baked for a short clip. BleedX uses Counter-Strike 2 as an example: CS2's smoke is volumetric, and bullets or grenades can tear brief, visible holes through it. His point is that GPU cost suddenly makes sense when simulation changes gameplay, not just appearance. In another reply, Niki B says it looks good but wouldn't pay $70 for it.

What's most worth watching in this demo is that the smoke starts to feel like an object that can participate in the scene. That's also where the problem lies. If it's only responsible for looking good, players will first do the graphics-card math; if it can block sight, be torn open by bullets, and affect tactics, the cost becomes easier to accept. What RedefineFX's Megabundle sells and whether it's worth it can't be proven by the video itself, but the comments have already laid out the questions for it.