The Next-Gen Graphics of Unreal Engine 5 are Revealed

After a year of waiting, Epic Games broke its silence, revealing new shots and info about Unreal Engine 5.

Unreal Engine 5 in Early Access

Specifically, the most important announcement of the company is that its advanced graphics engine is now available in Early Access. This early version is not ready for commercially available games. However, developers have the opportunity to start experimenting with its new tools as long as development continues.

At the same time, Epic unveiled various other new features of the graphics engine, such as the brand new sound system. To present all this, the company published a new detailed video, which you can see below. It also prepared a brand new very impressive demo that gives us another dose of next-gen graphics.

Here’s a roundup of the key new features that are ready for testing today

Nanite

Nanite is a virtualized micropolygon geometry system that enables you to create games with massive amounts of geometric detail, eliminating time-consuming and tedious work such as baking details to normal maps or manually authoring LODs. 

Lumen

Next up is Lumen, a fully dynamic global illumination solution. With Lumen, you can create dynamic, believable scenes where indirect lighting adapts on the fly to changes to direct lighting or geometry—for example, changing the sun’s angle with the time of day, turning on a flashlight, or opening an exterior door.

Alongside the new features mentioned above, there are plenty of innovations regarding animation, open-world systems, and metaSounds. It looks like Unreal Engine 5 paves the way for a new gaming era!