On April 5, video game development studio and distributor Epic Games is making the next generation of its development engine, Unreal Engine 5, available free of charge to everyone after almost a year of early access.
Pushing the boundaries of gaming even further with Unreal Engine 5
Two years after the announcement of the new version of Unreal Engine, Epic Games unveils through a communicated, the new technologies present in its engine. Among them, two key features: Lumen and Nanite.
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Lumen, a dynamic global illumination technique, allows direct and indirect lighting to be controlled in real time. As for Nanite, it is a geometry management system designed to support higher polygon count games while maintaining a guaranteed lossless real-time frame rate.
Unreal Engine 5 also offers many tools that will make life easier for developers, especially for the creation of open worlds. The World Partition makes it easier to create these worlds by dividing them across a grid and displaying only the necessary sections on the screen. The One File Per Actor allows creative teams to move forward on their projects without spilling over into the work of others.
Nanite allows you to create photorealistic environments and landscapes in real time. Screenshot: Epic Games.
In order to promote their new development engine and show off its capabilities, Epic Games has released Lyra, a multiplayer sandbox shooter. This sample allows developers and the curious to familiarize themselves with the software by having the basics to build on.
The technology of Unreal Engine 5 had already been presented to the general public last December through the demo of The Matrix Awakens or from chapter 3 of Fortnite which is already running under the new version of the engine.
Hugely popular and acclaimed games such as Life Is Strange 2, Rocket League or Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order were developed under the 4th version of the engine.
In addition, Epic Games has decided to keep the same economic model as that used with Unreal Engine 4. Namely, the use of the standard license is completely free as long as the developed game does not reach the million dollars in revenue. From this, the video game giant will claim 5% royalties.
Developers can use Lyramade available for free by Epic Games, to develop their own version of the game. Screenshot: Epic Games.
A development engine for all areas
Unreal has become very popular outside of the gaming industry. Sectors such as cinema or television use its tools to produce their content such as The Mandalorian. The series took advantage of Unreal Engine technology to project real-time environments onto huge LED screens.
In this momentum, the Epic Games engine offers new tools to design animations, sound and 3D models without going through third-party software. The goal is to be able to create very high quality audio or video content within Unreal Engine 5.
Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri told The Verge hope to see more and more of this kind of crossover between media in the future,” With new technologies, it is quite possible that a scene made for a series has a chance of ending up in a game or, if we look a little more towards the future, in a metaverse. »