Almost two years after its first announcement, Epic Games today officially published its new next generation graphic engine: as part of the event State of Unrealthe company revealed that Unreal Engine 5 is now available for download. The new engine features a number of developer enhancements, including improved performance and an updated user interface, but the most significant changes come from a handful of technologies designed specifically for creating more photorealistic images.
Unreal Engine 5 is official and available
These new changes include features such as Lumen“A fully dynamic global lighting solution” for more realistic lighting, e Nanite, which according to Epic “gives you the ability to create games and experiences with enormous amounts of geometric detail.” There are also more practical tools, such as the ability to subdivide sections of an open world to make it easier for teams to work across areas independently.
Overall, these tools are expected to simplify the making of large-scale, high-fidelity games; CD Projekt Red has already confirmed that he is using the tool to build the next Witcher. While this is the first time the engine has become available to developers on a large scale, some major projects made in Unreal Engine 5 have already been published via Epic itself.
Last December, Fortnite switched to Unreal 5 and, at the same time, we saw The Matrix Awakens, an impressive technical demo that allowed us to get a little taste of the potential of the new engine.
With tools such as Unreal Engine 5 and a new generation of gaming hardware, many industry experts are convinced that we will see more and more uses also not related to gaming, as has already happened in the case of The Mandalorian, just to give an example.