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Unreal Engine 5 now available in fullOut of early access and into some games
Out of early access and into some games
Unreal Engine 5has finally released, after nearly a year of early access and nearly two years since its reveal (featuring thatTomb Raiderish tech demo). Having launched a few minutes into Epic Games’State of Unrealevent, Unreal Engine 5 is likely to be the basis of many a PC game over the next few years, in addition to a few in-development games that have already made the jump: games likeS.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2andBlack Myth: Wukong.
It’s even been publicly playable here and there, as inThe Market of Lightand the console-only, Keanu Reeves-starringThe Matrix Awakensdemo. In fact, we’ve already had the full Unreal Engine 5 game inFortnite, which switched from Unreal Engine 4 to 5 as part of its Season 3 mega-update. Outside of some new destruction and weather effects, though, Fortnite maybe isn’t the best showcase for what the new engine can do.
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Chief among Unreal Engine 5’s upgrades is its dynamic Lumen lighting system, wherein changes to direct lighting (light that comes straight from the source, like a torch) will automatically induce changes to the indirect lighting (light that’s previously bounced off surfaces). It works with geometry changes too, so opening a door to a darkened room will more realistically flood it with light.
It may be some time before we can play games that make full use of all these tricks, but there’s plenty of promise here. It’s especially encouraging that Unreal Engine 5 appears to be balancing its desire for blindingly elaborate visuals with an interest in moderating the performance impact – ray tracing in games often looks lovely, but you do need to splurge on one of thebest graphics cardsto run it at decent frame rates. From what Epic have announced, and from what I’ve seen in The Market of Light, Lumen and Nanite won’t necessarily be as hard on your hardware.
