The roadmap for a new Unreal Engine 5.1 update reports new developer tools as well as many improvements.
The August 11Ari Arnbjörnsson, promoter d’Unreal, tweeted regarding this update. As a reminder, Unreal Engine from Epic Games is a tool that serves the game and video development. This tool not only has a great creative powerbut is also free to download. The engine, in its previous versions, has already contributed to the creation of many extremely popular games. Fortnite, Final Fantasy VII Remake et Kingdom Hearts 3 are among those critically acclaimed.
Unreal Engine 5.1, a mass of improvements
On the roadmap now public, we can see a multitude de modifications. Most of them mainly benefit the video game creators for consoles. Additionally, the update adds more options, of flexibility et depth to the Unreal engine.
In this new update, Epic Games took into account the developer requests and programmers. The company has done its best to provide tools that can simplify their creative process.
For example, modifications have more values in the overall production as well as the creation of worlds. Moreover, these improvements offer the possibility to the users of surpass what was once an impassable limit. It is therefore likely that players will be able to enjoy larger maps in upcoming games.
Furthermore, the console games are more likely to achieve the 60 fps thanks to Lumen improvements. These will allow, among other things, recreate better reflections on the water and on the translucent surfaces.
For better rendering, Unreal Engine 5.1 offers a better support in order to make the Path Tracer systems, GPU Lightmass et Niagara more efficient. This update also offers a new feature: Strata Materials. The latter concerns in particular the rendering of shadows.
Unfortunately, features like Nanite and Lumen will only be usable in the realm of video games.
The flip side
Unreal Engine constantly strives to provide a higher audio fidelity and of best graphics. In short, the Unreal Engine desires more realism. This pushes video game developers to create titles that are more and more faithful to reality.
Which is unavoidable since consumers demand products with made more immersive without the bugs.
However, this desire to get closer to reality in virtual worlds comes at a cost. It is mainly reflected in production processes studios. Production cycles become longer et more complicated bugs to be corrected appear. One thing leading to another, the developers want raise the price of games. Concretely, each major addition increases the possibility of the appearance of bugs and problems breaking the system. If so, the costs and time required to produce a work increases. However, some additions will probably stay unused by users
