Epic launches Unreal Engine 5
Nearly two years after it was first announced, Epic Games has released its next-generation game engine. As part of a State of Unreal event today, the company revealed that Unreal Engine 5 is now available to download.
The updated engine features a number of improvements for developers — including enhanced performance and an upgraded UI — but the most significant changes come from a handful of technologies designed for more photorealistic visuals. These include Lumen, “a fully dynamic global illumination solution” for more true-to-life lighting, and Nanite, which Epic says “gives you the ability to create games and experiences with massive amounts of geometric detail.” There are also more practical tools, like the ability to partition off sections of an open world to make it easier for teams to work on areas independently. Altogether, these tools are expected to make it easier to make large-scale games at a high fidelity; CD Projekt Red has already confirmed it’s using the tool to build the next Witcher.
While this is the first time the engine is available widely for game developers, a few major UE5 projects have already been released to the public through Epic itself. Last December, Fortnite moved over to Unreal 5, and at the same time, Epic released The Matrix Awakens, an impressive tech demo that merged the likenesses of Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss with a large open-world populated by the developer’s Metahuman characters.
“It’s very good that we can experiment with the user experience flows way before anybody else does,” Epic CTO Kim Libreri tells The Verge. “So actually, it’s very valuable to our customers because it means they don’t have to go through that. We don’t end up putting super unthought-out workflows
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