Epic Games has announced that its next-generation game engine, Unreal Engine 5 (UE5), is now available for download.
UE5’s availability was announced in Epic’s State of Unreal livestream, alongside a playable sample shooter called Lyra and The Matrix Awakens city demo.
The updated game engine has some exciting new features for game developers, including enhanced performance, upgraded UI and new ways to give games more photorealistic graphics.
Lumen is a new UE5 tool that provides “fully dynamic global illumination” for more realistic lighting that naturally adapts to the in-game world.
Additionally, developers will also have access to Nanite — a geometry system that will allow for game worlds to have massive amounts of geometric detail.
Together with a new world partitioning system, these tools will make it easier for developers to create highly detailed large-scale games.
CD Projekt Red has already confirmed that the next Witcher game will be built using UE5, and Epic moved Fortnite over to the new game engine last December.
Besides games, Unreal Engine has also been used in film and television production, like when The Mandalorian used Unreal Engine for its virtual assets.
Users can also download the sample multiplayer shooter Lyra to try out in UE5.
UE5 was announced in 2020 with this tech demo.
Read: Your Epic Games Store achievements can now be made public
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