After months of demos, tests and lots of mystery, Unreal Engine 5 got a big presentation and an official release. Many gamers got the chance to play the mind-bending Matrix Experience, The Mandolorian and Book of Boba Fett created hyper-realistic digital locations on the Volume, and Fortnite was taken to new heights; these things plus several animated shorts have been all we’ve been able to get our hands on from the next generation of Unreal Engine, but now it’s finally here.
Featuring unparalleled game fidelity using the lumen lighting system and the brain-melting power of nanite, incredible scaling content systems and tools to let you animate and model characters from within the Unreal Editor itself, no round trips from other programs required, the presentation showed us the final versions of some incredible new features. One new one that really caught my eye was the incredible procedural mesh systems, which can be explored in Lyra, an entire multiplayer shooter that you can go into and pick apart right now in the editor.
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And Unreal Engine wasn’t the only news in the presentation, Sketchfab has a new app that lets you scan objects in your home into usable 3D models that can be used in UE5, CDProject Red gave another update on the next Witcher game, and Crystal Dynamics announced a brand-new Tomb Raider title.
The potential of UE5 cannot be understated, and how it will completely shake up the Indie Dev community is undoubtedly going to be profound. Lumen removes the need to author lightmap UVs or wait for them to bake, Nanite allows for more triangles than ever thought possible with no loss in game performance, and the open partition system is going to blow away all previous open world systems.
Unreal Engine 5 is available now on Epic’s website, and we here at Indie Game Fans can’t wait to see what comes from this amazing new tech.
