Unreal Engine 5’s (UE5) massive graphical capabilities has become a powerful tool for developers to creatively make games for players to interact with. The new lighting system, Lumen, water physics and graphics, help to create convincing and realistic video games.
Unreal Engine is a software where people can develop games; however, the latest version, UE5, includes things like Nanite, Lumen, fluid simulation, optimization features, and more.
Lumen is a new engine responsible for global illuminations and reflections. It takes a scene and renders it at a lower quality, but light is interacting and being recorded to make a lightmap. The lightmap is used to trace the ray in every direction, the output lighting is upscaled and made into a cube map.
Michael Illian, Network Administrator for Region 16, understands about the big advancements for Lumen and Unreal Engine 5.
“It is not quite ray tracing, but it’s close to it,” said Illian. “The real time light and shadows are really impressive.”
There are optimizations being made, such as Nanite, to negate the performance issues of Unreal being demanding for the graphics processing unit. Many people who play games want 60 frames or more per second as it delivers a smooth experience.
Nanite allows for worlds being created to be extremely detailed. It also adjusts and renders the right amount of polygons people can perceive. Models like chairs or any object contain polygons. The more they have, the more graphics processing power is needed from your computer. Less polygons are rendered if the object is far away from a player’s point of view.
“The fact that you can zoom in on textures and get really close up and have high resolution textures [is] really impressive,” said Illian.
There are animation tools for developers to take advantage of to quickly animate things like a character or an object.
“It’s gotta really cut down on development time for [projects] and it’s so robust,” said Illian
A game studio, Drama, released an Unrecord early gameplay trailer on Youtube, receiving millions of views for how realistic it was. Many have argued the legitimacy of the video, but the studio behind Unrecord made a statement on Steam claiming it was real. They even made a video visibly showing Unreal Editor was being used. It also sparked another issue as Unrecord is a story-based game about a cop where your perspective is a bodycam. The problem is the story shows guns and violence being used while also looking like real life.
Water graphics and physics have improved a lot with UE5. Fluid Flux 2 being a plugin for the Unreal Engine Marketplace priced at $349.99 has real time fluid simulations and there are many people who showcased it on Youtube or other content platforms.
“Slender: The Arrival,” developed by Blue Isle Studios, is getting a 10-year anniversary update where one of the big changes was UE5 being introduced. The lighting has been revamped and textures are more detailed.
The future of games will certainly be quite an interesting future as the new engine gets adopted and becomes a standard: the lighting, graphical/texture improvements, optimizations, better tools for developers, and so much more. People will be able to play games capable with the new technologies transforming it into an unreal experience.
PHOTO CREDIT: Blue Isle Studios
