Today marked the release of Chapter 4 for the battle royale portion of Fortnite. Today also includes a big update to the game's engine which brings Fortnite up to Unreal Engine version 5.1. I felt as though this was a significant enough update to warrant a separate news post away from the other Chapter 4 news (still to come).
With this rather significant engine bump comes a lot of new visual features and changes. Epic Games outlined these changes that include everything from a move to DirectX 12 as the default renderer, to the addition of Temporal Super Resolution, to the inclusion of Nanite Virtualized Geometry.
Let's take a look at what all of the new features are and what they mean for you.
“Temporal Super Resolution†Setting
“Nanite Virtualized Geometry†Setting
“Global Illumination†Setting
“Reflections†Setting
“Hardware Ray Tracing†Setting
- This settings has the following options:
- Recommended (default): Selects the 3D resolution based on what works best for your display resolution.
- Performance: Prioritizes frame rate over final image quality by rendering at a lower resolution.
- Balanced: Balances the image quality versus performance.
- Quality: Prioritizes final image quality over performance by rendering at a higher resolution.
- Native: Allows you to render frames at the native display resolution at the expense of performance.
- Custom: Allows you to customize the 3D resolution on a slider.
“Nanite Virtualized Geometry†Setting
- Only available if the rendering mode is set to DirectX 12.
- If “Nanite Virtualized Geometry†is turned on, Nanite will be enabled.
- Note: When Nanite is enabled, the “Shadows†setting is renamed to “Virtual Shadows.â€
- Defaults to on when the “Quality Presets†setting is set to High or Epic.
- Please note that this setting cannot be changed mid-match.
“Global Illumination†Setting
- Enables Lumen Global Illumination when set to High or Epic.
- When Nanite is disabled, this setting has two options: Only Off, and Ambient Occlusion. (Ambient Occlusion = Lower quality ambient lighting with darkened corners.)
- When Nanite is enabled, two more options are added: Lumen High, and Lumen Epic.
- Please note that this setting cannot be changed mid-match.
“Reflections†Setting
- Enables Lumen Reflections when set to High or Epic.
- When Nanite is disabled, this setting has two options: Only Off, and Screen Space. (Screen Space = Calculates reflections based only on what is currently shown on the screen.)
- When Nanite is enabled, two more options are added: Lumen High, and Lumen Epic.
“Hardware Ray Tracing†Setting
- “Hardware Ray Tracing†makes it so that Lumen Global Illumination and Lumen Reflections use hardware-accelerated ray tracing. (The “Hardware Ray Tracing†setting in the “Graphics Quality†section has replaced the “Ray Tracing†section.)
- Is defaulted to off.
- To turn “Hardware Ray Tracing†on:
- Nanite must be enabled. (In other words, “Nanite Virtualized Geometry†is turned on.)
- Either “Global Illumination†or “Reflections†must be set to Lumen High or Lumen Epic.
- Turning this setting on or off requires a game restart to take effect.
This reliance on newer versions of Windows means that Windows 7 and Windows 8 will no longer be supported when Epic Games releases Chapter 4 Season 2 in a few months.
WHAT ARE THE MINIMUM PC SPECIFICATIONS TO RUN NANITE?
WHAT ARE THE RECOMMENDED PC SPECIFICATIONS TO RUN NANITE?
- GPU:
- NVIDIA: Maxwell-generation cards or newer
- AMD: GCN-generation cards or newer
- Latest graphics drivers
- Operating system:
- Windows 10 version 1909.1350 or newer, with support for DirectX 12 Agility SDK
- Windows 11
- Direct X version:
- DirectX 12
WHAT ARE THE RECOMMENDED PC SPECIFICATIONS TO RUN NANITE?
- GPU:
- NVIDIA: GeForce RTX 2080 or newer
- AMD: Radeon RX 5700 or newer
- Latest graphics drivers
- Operating system:
- Latest Windows 10 version, with support for DirectX 12 Agility SDK
- Latest Windows 11 version
- Direct X version:
- DirectX 12
As part of these graphical changes, Epic did move around a few options. Rendering Mode and VSync settings are now under the Display section of the options. DirectX 12 is now the default rendering mode on PC for some higher-end GPUs. The "Performance" mode is no longer in beta. Motion Blur is now under the Graphics section and is off by default.