Epic has officially released Unreal Engine 5 for developers to use. This comes about two years after Epic Games revealed their new engine with a tech demo release. Today's release of UE5 comes alongside a new playable demo, Lyra, and a "City Sample" that is the full city from The Matrix Awakens.
You can download both of these technical showcases right now to try Unreal Engine 5 out for yourself. Lyra is more action oriented while City Sample is more exploratory and is just kind of there for a look at how the engine handles large city environments. I'm almost afraid to try these out on my GTX 1080 Ti.
Unreal Engine 5 boasts a number of new features and improvements when compared to Unreal Engine 4. Two of the big new features are Lumen, which is a dynamic lighting and illumination system where light appears far more natural and is easy to implement. Nanite is the other big feature in UE5. This is a way for developers to add in professional or film quality assets into a game while still maintaining a reasonable framerate.
Epic says that they will be working to improve open-world games with Unreal Engine 5. The first implementation of this can be seen in The Matrix Awakens demo that came out on consoles some months back. The upcoming Witcher sequel will also use Unreal Engine 5. One last major addition in Unreal Engine 5 will be the implementation of their Metahuman system, a way to create realistic looking humans quickly and easily.
Like the previous Unreal Engine releases, Epic will continue to make improvements to Unreal Engine 5 throughout its life. They have already implemented improvements and changes suggested by The Coalition, the studio that created The Matrix Awakens. CD Projekt Red is also already working with Epic Games to further enhance the open-world aspect as development on the next Witcher game progresses.
