Epic launches Unreal Engine 5
Lyra game demo. © Epic Games.
Two years ago, Epic Games unveiled its 5th gen Unreal Engine for games, which demoed impressively on a preview version of the PlayStation 5. The company had planned to release it at the end of 2021, but it actually took a little longer as Epic Games waited to officially launch UE5, available for download, at its State of Unreal event.
The engine’s update features several optimizations that are useful for developers, such as improved performance and an upgraded user interface. But a handful of new technologies truly get it off the ground, among which Nanite and Lumen, which provide more photorealistic visuals. Nanite automatically generates massive quantities of geometric details and Lumen provides dynamic global lighting in real time. Other new tools improve groups’ productivity by cordoning off an open world so teams can work on zones independently.
Though the engine has not been widely available for game developers until now, Epic Games has used it on big projects, when Fortnite moved over to UE5 for example, or in the development of The Matrix Awakens demo. “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. As part of the UE5 launch, Epic is offering game developers a sample of The Matrix Awakens city to build on, but they’ll have to do without Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss.
⇨ YouTube, “The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience”
⇨ The Verge, Andrew Webster, “Epic launches Unreal Engine 5.”
2022-04-05
