Epic launches Unreal Engine 5
Brendan Sinclair
Managing Editor
Tuesday 5th April 2022
During its State of Unreal event, Epic Games today officially launched Unreal Engine 5, nearly two years after the original announcement and almost one year after releasing it in Early Access.
Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Epic VP of engineering Nick Penwarden says the release represents Epic's ongoing effort to make Unreal Engine the first choice "for creating real-time 3D content, for creating the next generation of content and shared experiences across all mediums, whether it is video games, or film, or live interactive experiences."
The engine's biggest new features include the Lumen dynamic lighting system that eliminates the need for authoring or baking lightmaps, and the Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry system, which Penwarden says would allow for higher-polygon source assets without needing to worry about polygon and draw call budgets.
The sample game Lyra gives UE5 users an example to build on
"When we look at a lot of the main features in Unreal Engine, one of our primary focuses was exactly how we provide these functionalities in ways that simplify or remove technical constraints," Penwarden says. "With World Partition being able to make large, streaming worlds without thinking up front about what your strategy is going to be for dividing content into streamable cells, or with Nanite, not having to think about what your polygon budgets are and just being able to make the most incredible-looking model you can and bringing it into the engine.
"The other part that has changed is as technology has evolved and UE is able to produce more and more photorealistic images, it also becomes more of a challenge to create that type of high-end content, which is
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