A new update to Unreal Engine came out (5.1) and it's a game changer. HUGE improvements. If you don't know, Unreal Engine is arguably the best game engine on the market and you can even play with it for free. If you decide to release a game with it you can make up to $100k USD without paying royalties. I love experimenting with Unreal as a hobby and here's some of what's new….

As you know, nanite is the LOD renderer that lets you have almost an unlimited amount of polygons on-screen with minimal FPS impact. Unfortunately, this has many limitations. But with 5.1 some of those limitations were removed. For once, nanite now works with folliage, meaning you can place like 100k trees and it's no big deal. Previously if you wanted 100k trees you were looking at catching your computer on fire trying to render all of that (joking). This is a huge, HUGE game changer. Why? Because previously with nanite you were stuck creating these very large spaces that didn't have much folliage. So think deserts or cities with tall buildings. Kinda lame if you think about it. Now you can make lush forests! Pretty cool.

With 5.1 there is now an experimental feature where nanite can work with landscapes as well. This means that mountains can be as big or complex as you shape it. Previously, mountains had to be created as an asset and imported with LOD configurations. Not anymore! Well, that's if the feature works. See, it's experimental so sometime in the near future, it will work well. For now, it might be a bit buggy. But expect complex mountains, hills and paths using nanite tech! This also means that you would be able to create trails and paths.

Another great feature is how light can pass through transparent/semi transparent objects including folliage and glass and it can use lumens tech! This is basically simulated ray tracing. In 5.x the lighting was incorrect especially for mirrors. Now it's very close to pure raytracing. The impact of being able to see what's behind you from a transparent glass thanks to the lighting hits different. This isn't just for windows but for jars, cups, lanterns, rivers, oceans, clothes like armor, etc…

Animation tweening has been vastly improved too! It's much easier to play with animations inside the editor and it's becoming a lot more like Maya or adobe premier. This is a huge QoL improvement!

There is also lumens and nanite support for VR now! Yes, now you can create immersive worlds in VR, it's going to get crazy! I toyed around with VR a bit but need to reference the manual because I couldn't get the HUD to show up in sterescopic 3D lol. I'll give it another go later.

I can't think of any other major changes on top of my head but 5.1 in general is big. I'm hyped! I want to create a mech tech demo with elite dangerous style HUD where there are 3-layers of UI. Sadly It's been like a year since I last modeled anything so I'm going to need to practice on that first haha! What do you guys think? With these advancements, it means that other game engines need to catch up as well and gaming in general will improve dramatically.