One of Epic’s goals in this next generation is to achieve photorealism on par with movie CG and real life, and put it within practical reach of development teams of all sizes through highly productive tools and content libraries.

The reveal was introduced with “Lumen in the Land of Nanite,” a real-time demo running live on PS5, to showcase Unreal Engine technologies that will free creators to reach the highest level of real-time rendering detail in the next generation of games and beyond.

This demo previews two of the new core technologies that will debut in Unreal Engine 5:

• Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see. Nanite virtualized geometry means that film-quality source art comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons can be imported directly into Unreal Engine—anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans to CAD data—and it just works. Nanite geometry is streamed and scaled in real time so there are no more polygon count budgets, polygon memory budgets, or draw count budgets; there is no need to bake details to normal maps or manually author LODs; and there is no loss in quality.
• Lumen is a fully dynamic global Illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes. The system renders diffuse interreflection with infinite bounces and indirect specular reflections in huge, detailed environments, at scales ranging from kilometers to millimeters. Artists and designers can create more dynamic scenes using Lumen, for example, changing the sun angle for time of day, turning on a flashlight, or blowing a hole in the ceiling, and indirect lighting will adapt accordingly. Lumen erases the need to wait for lightmap bakes to finish and to author light map UVs—a huge time savings when an artist can move a light inside the Unreal Editor and lighting looks the same as when the game is run on console.

Numerous teams and technologies have come together to enable this leap in quality. To build large scenes with Nanite geometry technology, Epic’s team made heavy use of the Quixel Megascans library, which provides film-quality objects up to hundreds of millions of polygons. To support vastly larger and more detailed scenes than previous generations, PlayStation 5 provides a dramatic increase in storage bandwidth.

The demo also showcases existing engine systems such as Chaos physics and destruction, Niagara VFX, convolution reverb, and ambisonics rendering.

Unreal Engine 4 & 5 timeline

Unreal Engine 4.25 already supports next-generation console platforms from Sony and Microsoft, and Epic is working closely with console manufacturers and dozens of game developers and publishers using Unreal Engine 4 to build next-gen games.

Unreal Engine 5 will be available in preview in early 2021, and in full release late in 2021, supporting next-generation consoles, current-generation consoles, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android.

Epic is designing for forward compatibility, so developers can get started with next-gen development now in UE4 and move projects to UE5 when ready.

Epic will release Fortnite, built with UE4, on next-gen consoles at launch and, in keeping with the team’s commitment to prove out industry-leading features through internal production, migrate the game to UE5 in mid-2021.

Unreal Engine royalties waived on first $1 million in game revenue

Starting today, game developers can download and use Unreal Engine for free as always, except now royalties are waived on the first $1 million in gross revenue per title. The new Unreal Engine license terms, which are retroactive to January 1, 2020, give game developers an unprecedented advantage over other engine license models. For more information, visit the FAQ.

Epic Online Services have launched!

Epic Online Services are battle-tested and powered by the services built for Fortnite across seven major platforms (PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, iOS, and Android). Open to all developers, Epic Online Services is completely free and offers creators a single SDK to quickly and easily launch, operate, and scale their games across engines, stores, and platforms of their choice.

“At Epic, we believe in open, integrated platforms and in the future of gaming being a highly social and connected experience,” said Chris Dyl, General Manager, Online Services, Epic Games. “Through Epic Online Services, we strive to help build a user-friendly ecosystem for both developers and players, where creators can benefit regardless of how they choose to build and publish their games, and where players can play games with their friends and enjoy the same quality experience regardless of the hardware they own.”

Included at launch are two suites of services that help developers further enrich connected experiences for players. With the highly anticipated addition of the Game Services and Epic Account Services—which include cross-play, cross-progression, and other preeminent online features—developers can now facilitate even greater engagement by enabling players to connect with their friends without platform boundaries.

Game Services:

Working independently of one another, and independently of any stores and platforms, Game Services deliver the essential set of backend services a game needs to work on any platform or store. Developers are free to selectively mix and match Game Services together with any other services, and are able to authenticate players with the OpenID identity provider of their choice or with any of the included out-of-the-box integrations with Apple, Discord, Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, and Epic Games.

• Matchmaking: Match up players in pairs or groups to play together.
• Lobbies (Preview): Give players the ability to join a session via invite or search, or create sessions of your own for players to join.
• Peer-to-peer: Establish peer-to-peer network connectivity between multiple players regardless of firewalls or router setups.
• Achievements: Motivate your players with badges, statuses, and achievements as they progress in your game.
• Stats: Query player stats in real time and display achievements on leaderboards or within your own game construct.
• Leaderboards: Show your players how they rank against their friends and everyone else, encouraging competitive and engaging gameplay.
• Player data storage: Give your players the freedom to move between platforms by storing their game data in the cloud.
• Game analytics: Track gameplay, frequency, playerbase, time, and location KPIs to identify opportunities for improvement or expansion.
• Player ticketing: Connect directly with your players and personalize service through tickets tied to player profiles.

Epic Account Services:

Epic Account Services enable a developer to connect to Epic accounts and leverage the largest cross-platform social graph in the world, with more than 350 million players and their 2.2 billion friend connections on over half-a-billion devices, built up by Fortnite.

• Login: Enable players to sign in with their Epic Games account and any of the system’s supported identity providers including PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Facebook, and Google.
• Friends: Show your players when their friends are online on any platform, and help them stay connected so they can easily party up and play.