Unreal Engine 5.1 is available today, building upon the groundbreaking feature set introduced inUE5 to enable even easier and faster 3D content creation. A range of stress-tested newfeatures and improvements in 5.1 make Unreal even more robust, efficient, and versatile forcreators across all industries.

Games

As over half of all announced next-gen games are being created with Unreal Engine, developers

can now take advantage of updates to the Lumen dynamic global illumination and reflections

system, the Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry system, and Virtual Shadow Maps

(VSM) that lay the groundwork for games and experiences running at 60 frames per second

(fps) on next-gen consoles and capable PCs. These improvements will enable fast-paced

competition and detailed simulations without latency.

Additionally, Nanite has also added a Programmable Rasterizer to allow for material-driven

animations and deformations via World Position Offset, as well as opacity masks. This

exciting development paves the way for artists to use Nanite to program specific objects’

behavior, for example Nanite-based foliage with leaves blowing in the wind.

UE 5.1 also adds several features to improve efficiency for developers of games and other

large-scale interactive projects, helping teams be more productive. For instance, Virtual Assets

decouple the metadata from the object data, enabling developers to sync only what they need

from source control systems such as Perforce—resulting in smaller workspaces and faster

syncs for developers who don’t need access to the full object data. The new automated

Pipeline State Object (PSO) caching for DX12 simplifies the process needed to prepare a

game for shipping in DX12. And lastly, on-demand shader compilation compiles only the

shaders needed to render what is seen on screen while working in the Unreal Editor, which can

result in significant time savings and increased interactivity.

For developers building massive open worlds, this release also delivers additional functionality

and improved workflows. World Partition now supports Large World Coordinates, enabling

the creation of massive open worlds without loss of precision. Users can also enjoy accelerated

source control workflows with World Partition, thanks to an improved user experience

around managing, filtering, searching, and viewing files and changelists. It’s also now easier to

find content in the world from within your changelists, and vice versa. In addition, new HLOD

(Hierarchical Level of Detail) support for water rendering and streaming enables users to

create large water bodies in open worlds with better performance and a smaller memory