Unreal Engine 5 Released

During today's State of Unreal livestream, Epic Games announced they are finally releasing a stable version of Unreal Engine 5. The engine was originally unveiled in 2020 when the team showed an incredible demo running on the PlayStation 5. The engine brings the power of GI, super realistic details, millions of triangles, physics, and more.

Alongside Unreal Engine 5, the team is shipping a new starter game, Lyra, that will help you build new worlds even faster. The team also shared City Sample, featuring a full city, buildings, vehicles, and crowds from The Matrix Awakens.

Several developers are now using Unreal Engine 5 to build new games. For example, CD Projekt Red and The Coalition are already developing games with UE5 and helping Epic Games prepare new updates for the engine. 

For those of you who missed the news, UE5 introduced two new core features. The first is Nanite which allows artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see. Film-quality source art comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons can be imported directly into Unreal Engine (anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans to CAD data).

Lumen, the second big feature, is a fully dynamic global Illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes. The system renders diffuse interreflection with infinite bounces and indirect specular reflections in huge, detailed environments, at scales ranging from kilometers to millimeters.

Share your thoughts on the announcement in the comments and discuss what they should add in future updates. Also, don't forget to join our new Reddit page, our new Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.