Billions of polygons – Epic Games announced Unreal Engine 5

Over the past year, Unreal Engine 4 has introduced advanced physics of destruction, full-frame global illumination (GI, Global Illumination), smart particles and other advanced technologies designed to simplify the work of authors. In addition, the company took over Quixel, bringing the asset library to unattainable heights.

However, the company considered a dynamic system for working with models to be a step towards Unreal Engine 5, which will allow to display billions of polygons in each frame. This means that studios will save many months on preparing models, baking and creating LODs.

The "Lumen in the land of Nanite" demo runs in real-time on the PlayStation 5 console, which, among other things, features an innovative memory system that includes fast direct-access SSDs. Probably, thanks to this SSD, heavy models can be compressed "on the fly". It will be possible to personally try these high-end features only in 2021.