The Future Is Here: Unreal Engine 5 Revealed in New Demo

Unreal Engine 5, a new generation engine from Epic Games, was demonstrated today during the Summer Game Fest 2020 online event. The company presented an impressive tech demo called “Lumen in the Land of Nanite,” which the developers ran on PlayStation 5.

Unreal Engine 5 uses two new technologies that Epic calls Nanite and Lumen.

Nanite allows importing movie quality materials into the engine, starting from models that contain hundreds of millions of polygons to photogrammetry scans. Nanite-based geometry is broadcasting and scaling in real time, so, according to Epic, developers do not have to worry about a limited number of polygons.

Lumen is a technology of completely dynamic global illumination which instantly reacts to what is happening in a scene. The system draws the lighting at a distance that can vary from millimeters to kilometers. Among other things, Lumen will simplify life for artists and designers ⁠— they will be able to move the light source in the engine tools and immediately see how the scene will look in the game.

An early version of Unreal Engine 5 will be available in early 2021, and the full release will take place in late 2021. The engine supports current and future consoles, as well as PC, Mac, iOS and Android.