The Unreal Engine 5.1 update is now available. This brings incredible improvements to the groundbreaking technology present in UE5. The update makes everything more efficient and better looking and brings increased versatility to the table.
Lumen, Nanite and Virtual Shadow Maps improvements
The Nanite is a new feature that came with Unreal Engine 5. They are simple polygons that form any object. The initial idea was based on LOD(Level of detail) which basically reduced the number of polygons based on the distance. The 5.1 update comes with a groundbreaking Nanite Foliage feature, that replaces the visible LOD transitions while barely affecting performance. Pretty impressive, right?
The engine now also has improved reflections that actually consider the surroundings. Before the update, most of the reflections were not entirely accurate but now an option was added to make them more realistic. The same principle now works for the water reflections as well, accurately reflecting clouds and surrounding areas. This might eat more resources but it is worth it.
As for the Lumen improvements, the light now bounces in a more realistic way in the Unreal Engine 5.1 update. Despite being amazing when it was first introduced, imagine it just got better.
All these new features and improvements for the existing ones also come with multiple settings that ease up the development process.
The new update increased the world area size
The world area just got bigger! In the initial release, the safe distance for a world was roughly 22 kilometres. Unreal Engine 5.1 comes with an enormous 88 million kilometres of world size. What does this mean? Well before, if you were getting far from an area where you had widgets, they started to break. The new update greatly improves this making it much easier to develop a game that needs a large world.
AI Toolset improvements
In the update, the new artificial intelligence tools that were launched with UE5 are now exiting the experimental status. The MassEntity is a gameplay-focused framework that allows you to add huge numbers of smart NPC that act realistic, and it just got a few improvements regarding performance and memory usage.
Another AI toolset is the Smart Object – numerous objects that can be placed in the world for the AI agents and players to interact. In this release, the stability is increased and the workflow is greatly improved, making it easier to create and set them up.
The audio system also benefits from the new MetaSounds, greatly improving sound generation. Soundscape is also a new feature that generates ambient sounds.
Basically, things got easier for developers
On top of the numerous new features added in this revolutionary update and the improvement of the already existing ones, the development process is now way easier. The update features several enhancements regarding virtual production, animation, rigging and modelling. The Machine Learning Deformer which is now a new beta feature, allows creators to create high-fidelity approximations of proprietary rigs, making it much easier to create and edit models.
Fortnite Chapter 4 features Unreal Engine 5.1
Epic Games revealed that the game is based on some of the newest capabilities added in Unreal Engine 5.1 with the release of Fortnite’s fourth Chapter. Since the game’s release, it released rounds of seasonal content divided into Chapters and Seasons. Previously featuring Unreal Engine 5 in Chapter 3, Epic Games is the owner of the engine and seems to use Fortnite as a pilot for new features.
All being said, we can’t wait to see what the future will bring us and what amazing worlds can now be created with the help of Unreal Engine 5.1’s ground-breaking technology!
