Nearly two years into the current console generation, games will soon begin to fully utilize new and improved technologies to make generational leaps, and a big part of that, of course, is the generational leaps being made by game development engines themselves. Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5 has been touting some impressive improvements, and now, after having been available in early access for nearly a year, the engine has launched in full, with its complete feature-set now available for all developers to leverage.
The same was announced in Epic’s recent State of Unreal stream, where the company took the chance to once again highlight some of Unreal Engine 5’s headlining new features, including the fully dynamic global illumination system Lumen, the new virtualized micropolygon geometry system Nanite, Virtual Shadow Maps, Temporal Super Resolution, character and animation tools, several features targeted specifically at open world development, and more. You can check out the full release notes for Unreal Engine 5’s launch through here.
Multiple major developers in the industry have officially confirmed that they’re switching to Unreal Engine 5, from The Coalition and Ninja Theory to CD Projekt RED and many more. During the State of Unreal stream, it was also announced that Crystal Dynamics is developing a new Tomb Raider game that’s being built using Epic’s new engine. Reports have suggested that other major upcoming games like the next Mass Effect, BioShock 4, The Outer Worlds 2, and more will also do the same.
