Why are studios switching to Unreal Engine 5?

2022 will be a year when big guns will be used, and new milestones will be created for the game industry. Already, big companies like CD Projekt, The Coalition, and Crystal Dynamics have announced switching to Unreal Engine 5. It became a matter of curiosity why such big companies did not continue on their game engines and switched to Unreal Engine 5.

Players still haven’t forgotten CD Projekt‘s Cyberpunk 2077 (it probably won’t be overlooked for a long time). The big problems created by the RED Engine used in the game’s development and the inability to handle such a big game caused a great lousy perception in the company. The company announced that it would use Unreal Engine 5 instead of its game engine, RED Engine, upon possible fears such as repeating the same things in the Witcher series, where the expectations are great.

Unreal Engine 5, but why?

Epic, which revealed all the game engine’s power with The Matrix Awakens, a demo we encountered in the past months, managed to arouse significant repercussions in the industry. This resonance grew with many demos revealing high-end graphics, reflections, and interactions. While many individual developers have continued with UE4, big studios have slowly switched to Unreal Engine 5.

True new-gen

When it comes to new generation games, games such as Elden Ring and Horizon: Forbidden west already come to mind. However, Unreal Engine 5′ still has not revealed its full potential. Games that will truly unleash the power of this game engine are still in the making. When asked what exactly makes a game next-gen, I don’t think anyone can give a definitive answer. Good graphics? Dynamic lighting? There are dozens more that we can count. These are among what Epic wants to add to the industry with UE5. Imagine a game where the lighting is entirely dynamic, there is nothing but player creations, there are structures that can be built with wood and clay, and these can be destroyed at will; this is exactly what Epic is aiming for with UE5.

Not just limited to games

When it comes to Unreal Engine, you should never limit your perspective to games. Epic also sets digital entertainment outside of games as its target. Concerts, VR/AR worlds, apps, and more.

The simplest example shown here is the Metahuman tool included in Unreal. This tool enables the creation of highly realistic in-game characters, regardless of usage area, and simplifies the complicated character design process.

Many industries have moved to digitize physical processes and are starting to offer new freedoms. Imagine an auto company creating a virtual showroom, and you can save your company millions of dollars while doing it, because why not?

It is likely that we will see Unreal Engine 5 being used in many productions, big and small, over the next few years.

Advanced toolset

The Coalition officials announced that they switched to Unreal Engine 5 to develop their new games. Immediately after this announcement, they stated that they would benefit from tools such as Lumen and Nanite and that they were very excited about this. So what are these tools, let’s take a look

Lumen

Lumen is a tool created after years of Epic’s research to bring dynamic lighting and reflections to the Unreal Engine.

Lumen can handle infinite bounces and reflections on scales from millimeters to kilometers in large, detailed environments. For example, diffusely bouncing light from a surface takes on that surface’s color and reflects colored light onto other nearby surfaces. In other words, it creates an effect called color bleed. This real-time calculation will also affect reflections and ambient lighting depending on the light situation.

Nanite

Nanite, a virtualized polygon technology, will allow the creation of models with billions of polygons within UE5. Promising great convenience in terms of performance, Nanita technology will open the door to the use of micro polygons more than 100 times what was possible before. Tens of millions of micro polygons are now possible with Nanite.

Games to be developed with Unreal Engine 5

Most of the games on the list are still in development and will likely take a long time to come out. Epic Games has released an image of developer studios that will use Unreal Engine 5 as part of its “The State of Unreal 2022 Keynote” presentation.

It’s hard not to get excited about the games developed using Nanite and Lumen technology. Here is the list of games we know “for now” and will be developed with Unreal Engine 5;