Since the debut of his demo in 2020, there have been many rumors about Unreal Engine 5. Described by many as the first real look at next-gen video game development, many developers have chosen to build their next project using Unreal Engine 5 and its new technologies, such as Lumen and Nanite.
Even developers and publishers who have relied on their own engines (such as Electronic Arts with Frostbite) have chosen to use Epic’s software. To name just a few: BioShock 4, the next Mass Effect game, and even the next Witcher game will be built with Unreal Engine 5. At the State of Unreal event held today, Epic revealed that the engine has officially launched and is ready for download.
Even though Unreal Engine 5 Boasting an improved user interface and increased performance, the real brilliance of the engine lies in the underlying technologies it uses to achieve a photorealistic effect. Nanite allows developers to introduce movie-like fidelity levels of art into their games without significantly degrading performance. For all intents and purposes, Nanite intends Level of Detail (LOD) solutions to be completely redundant by comparison.
For its part, the Lumen technology of Unreal Engine 5 It is presented as a dynamic global illumination tool that produces or mimics real-life lighting efficiently and faithfully. Epic has already shown off both technologies in its first tech demo, titled Lumen in the Land of Nanite.
In addition to putting Unreal Engine 5 Available to all developers, Epic has also decided to release a portion of the city environment that its developers built for The Matrix Awakens demo, as a playing field for other developers to test the engine’s technological capabilities.
In a similar vein to Unreal Tournament, Unreal Engine 5 it also launches with a multiplayer shooter called Lyra. Epic describes the sample game as a hands-on learning tool, allowing developers to customize Lyra to suit their needs and even use it as a good foundation for their own project.
As big-budget TV shows like The Mandalorian have started using Unreal for their digital sets, the lines between video games, movies, and TV shows have started to blur in a way that was virtually incomprehensible and foolishly optimistic two years ago. decades. Kim Libreri, Epic’s chief technology officer, seems to think this is just the beginning.