Epic Games introduces Unreal Engine 5 with demo running on PS5

Today, Epic Games introduced the next version of its next-gen gaming engine, the Unreal Engine 5. Via Summer Game Fest, Epic Games showed a real-time playable demo running on PlayStation 5 which looked incredible.

With “Lumen in the Land of Nanite,” the people at Epic Games introduced two core technologies, Nanite and Lumen.

Nanite, a virtualized geometry system, allows artists import film-quality art made out of “hundreds of millions or billions of polygons” directly into the engine.

Lumen, a fully-dynamic global illumination tool, “reacts to scene and light changes.” It can let artists apply dynamic and realistic lighting. The change in the angle of the sun was a great example in the real-time demo.

An early preview of Unreal Engine 5 will be available in early 2021, with a full release scheduled for late 2021. UE5 will support current-gen and next-gen consoles, PC, Mac, Android and iOS.

Fortnite will start making the transition to UE5 in mid-2021.

Also, Epic Games is opening up its Epic Online Services used in Fortnite to all developers for free. With EOS, game services as matchmaking, achievements, stats, leaderboards, etc, will be available on all major platforms.

One feature that may give the PlayStation 5 an advantage with the use of UE5 is the storage architecture. According to Tim Sweeney, the PS5 has “the best SSD solution you can buy on PC today. And so it’s really exciting to be seeing the console market push forward the high-end PC market in this way.”

Unreal Engine 5 | “Lumen in the Land of Nanite”

Unreal Engine 5 | “Lumen in the Land of Nanite”

Unreal Engine 5 | “Lumen in the Land of Nanite”

Unreal Engine 5 | “Lumen in the Land of Nanite”

[Sources]: @TheGameAwards (YouTube): Unreal Engine 5 Reveal – Summer Game Fest, PlayStation 5 First Gameplay. UnrealEngine.com: A first look at Unreal Engine 5.