| Unreal Engine 5 | |
|---|---|
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| Original author | Tim Sweeney |
| Developer | Epic Games |
| Initial release | 5.0 / April 5, 2022; 3 years ago (2022-04-05)[1] |
| Stable release | |
| Written in | C++[3] |
| Operating system | Windows,Linux,macOS |
| Predecessor | Unreal Engine 4 |
| License | Source-available commercial software withroyalty model for commercial use[4] |
| Website | unrealengine |
Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) is the latest iteration ofUnreal Engine, developed byEpic Games. It was revealed in May 2020 and officially released in April 2022. Unreal Engine 5 includes multiple upgrades and new features, including Nanite, a system that automatically adjusts thelevel of detail ofmeshes, and Lumen, a dynamicglobal illumination andreflections system that leverages software as well as hardware acceleratedray tracing.
Unreal Engine 5 was revealed on May 13, 2020, supporting all existing systems that could runUnreal Engine 4, including thePlayStation 5 andXbox Series X/S.[5] It was released in early access on May 26, 2021,[6] and formally launched for developers on April 5, 2022.[1]
Epic Games worked withSony to optimize Unreal Engine 5 for the PlayStation 5.[7] To demonstrate the ease of use of the engine, both companies collaborated on a demo called "Lumen in the Land of Nanite" for the PlayStation 5 which featured aphotorealistic cave setting that could be explored by players. The demo was showcased during the May 2020 reveal of the engine, and leveraged Nanite, Lumen, and assets from the Quixel library.[8][9] Epic also affirmed that the Xbox Series X/S would fully support Unreal Engine 5.[10]
Epic has used its gameFortnite as a testbed for Unreal Engine 5.[8][11][12] The game was updated to use Unreal Engine 5 in December 2021.[13] Briefly after, Epic releasedThe Matrix Awakens, a promotional game demo for the 2021 movieThe Matrix Resurrections, to showcase Unreal Engine 5 and other technology (such as MetaHuman Creator).[14]
Unreal Engine 5 was made available to download in April 2022. It included a redesigned Unreal Editor with new animation and modelling tools.[15][16] Some of the first major titles making full use of the new engine were released in 2023, including theLayers of Fear remake,Remnant 2 andImmortals of Aveum.[17][18][19]
A major feature of Unreal Engine 5 is Nanite, a virtualized geometry system that allows developers to usephotogrammetry and other high-detail meshes in their games without significant performance impact.[20] Traditionally, artists had to create multiple models for different levels of detail (LoDs) and generatenormal maps for finer details. Nanite automatically manages LoDs by scaling models dynamically based ondraw distance,screen resolution, and performance requirements.[21][22] It utilizes a hierarchical structure, allowing different parts of a single mesh to render at varying levels of detail.[23] Nanite is compatible with many3D model formats, includingZBrush sculpts andCAD models, enabling developers to directly import film-quality assets without manual optimization.[24] According to Epic Games' Brian Karis, one of the significant innovations in Nanite is its ability to stitch edges between different automatically generated LoDs seamlessly, ensuring that no cracks appear at boundaries.[23] In its initial release, Nanite was only compatible withstatic meshes.[23]
Unreal Engine 5 takes advantage of the high-speedsolid-state storage in next-generation hardware in order to stream assets into memory as they are needed.[21][22] Epic Games CEOTim Sweeney emphasized that this storage speed allows developers to "bring in [a game's] geometry and display it despite it not all fitting in memory," eliminating traditional loading screens and enabling seamless transitions between varying levels of detail as objects move closer to the player.[22] Additionally, UE5 provides a way to divide large maps into smaller partitions called "World Partition," which decreases the amount of the level needed to be loaded.[25]
Lumen is a dynamicray traced global illumination and reflections system that can react in real-time to scene and lighting changes.[20][26] It eliminates the need for precomputedlightmaps for a given scene and enables automatic adjustments to light, reflections, and shadows.[21] Lumen supports both software and hardware ray tracing. The software ray tracing option, which uses Mesh Distance Fields, is optimized for a broad range of devices and enables fast ray intersections at the cost of lower fidelity.[27] Hardware ray tracing offers higher accuracy and supports additional geometry types, including skinned meshes. Lumen also incorporates a Surface Cache system that reduces thecomputational overhead required to evaluate lighting. When Lumen is disabled, the engine defaults toSigned Distance Field Ambient Occlusion for a lower-fidelity lighting solution.[27]
Virtual Shadow Maps is another component added in Unreal Engine 5 described as "a new shadow mapping method used to deliver consistent, high-resolution shadowing that works with film-quality assets and large, dynamically lit open worlds".[28] Virtual Shadow Maps differs from the commonshadow map implementation in its high resolution, more detailed shadows, and the absence of shadow cascade andpop-in issues present in commonly used shadow mapping techniques.[29]
UE5 uses Niagara for fluid and particle dynamics and its own Chaos physics engine in place ofPhysX.[8][30] Added in UE5.2, the engine introduced a new material creation system named Substrate, offering more versatile and modular authoring of materials.[31][32]
Additional Unreal Engine 5 features come from Epic's acquisitions and partnerships. The Nanite virtualized geometry technology allows Epic to take advantage of its past acquisition of Quixel, the world's largestphotogrammetry library as of 2019.[8] The MetaHuman Creator is a project based on technology from three companies acquired by Epic—3Lateral, Cubic Motion, and Quixel—to allow developers to quickly create realistic human characters that can then be exported for use within Unreal.[33] Through partnership with Cesium, Epic plans to offer a free plugin to provide 3Dgeospatial data for Unreal users, allowing them to recreate any part of the mapped surface of Earth.[34] Epic will includeRealityCapture, a product it acquired with its acquisition of Capturing Reality that can generate 3D models of any object from a collection of photographs taken of it from multiple angles,[35] and the variousmiddleware tools offered byEpic Games Tools.[36]
From UE 5.5 onwards, Epic Games introduced a layer that makes it easier to maintain WebRTC internally, allowing Pixel Streaming 2 plugin to began shipping with Unreal Engine.[37]
Unreal Engine 5 has been credited with allowing developers to create games using higher fidelity assets via Nanite with more realistic lighting via Lumen.[38] Gaming outlets credited UE5 for its use in multiple games from 2023 to 2025 includingBlack Myth: Wukong,Remnant 2,Senua's Saga: Hellblade II andAvowed.[39][40][41][42][43] It has also been praised for allowing smaller independent and AA developers to achieve similar levels of graphical fidelity as larger studios.[44][45][46][47] For example, Sandfall Interactive's debut titleClair Obscur: Expedition 33 utilized many features like Lumen, Nanite and MetaHuman, to assist in keeping the development process more focused on the elements that would have the most impact on the player experience.
The engine has been blamed for certain types of performance issues, namely shader compilation stutter and traversal stutter – frame-time jumps that occur when a player's actions cause more entities to load into the game, although not all UE5 games display these issues to the same degree.[38][43][48][49][50][51] Additionally, the use of temporal anti-aliasing, which is enabled by default, can in some cases lead to blur.[50][52] Epic Games has acknowledged the shader compilation issue and has created a new system to better identify which shaders to precompile.[53][54]CD Projekt, meanwhile, is working on a custom system that improves entity loading forThe Witcher IV, parts of which may beupstreamed to Unreal Engine itself.[55][56]
Unreal Engine 5 retains the royalty model started with Unreal Engine 4, with developers returning 5% ofgross revenues to Epic Games, although this fee is waived for sales made through theEpic Games Store (EGS).[57] Further, Epic announced alongside Unreal Engine 5 that they will not take any fee from games using any version of Unreal Engine for the firstUS$1 million in gross revenue, retroactive to January 1, 2020.[58] In October 2024, Epic lowered royalties to 3.5% on sales of games outside EGS if they list the game on EGS as well.[59] The source code for Unreal Engine 5 is available onGitHub.[60]
Epic unveiled per-seat licensing of the Unreal Engine, starting in April 2024, for its runtime use with non-gaming applications such as in film and television production if their revenues exceed $1 million, with each seat costing $1850/year.[61][62]
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