Version 5.2 of Epic Games’ flagship engine is adorned with new features, most aimed at improving performance.
The masters in the field that are Digital Foundry have split a video presenting the said new features of the Unreal Engine 5, with obviously a battery of tests in support.
Jerkiness problems a thing of the past?
Unveiled in a demo on PS5 in 2020 (yes, already!), the Unreal Engine 5 then went into early access in 2021 and hasn’t stopped improving (and impressing) ever since. At GDC 2023 last March, Epic Games finally presented the impressive new features of version 5.2.
This version has recently received new features. Epic Games’ main goal, as with version 5.1 of the engine, is to improve performance and minimize the stuttering issues that have plagued a myriad of games under Unreal Engine 4. This includes simplified procedural generation , both to make it easier for developers and to make the process less resource-intensive for our machines.
Performance is also improving thanks to a software version of Lumen, the Unreal Engine 5’s flagship global illumination and dynamic reflections solution. This was until now available in a much more demanding hardware version, but which inevitably also offers more detailed results.
Contributions to qualify
The other major point on which the novelties of the Unreal Engine 5.2 focus is the improvement of the behavior of the compilation of the shaders (the PC version of The Last of Us Part I would have needed it…). In this sense, it further improves the asynchronous compilation introduced in version 5.1 to reduce jerk problems to a strict minimum. Despite these improvements, Digital Foundry still noted some slowdowns, despite a very (very) solid configuration.
Another downside retained by Digital Foundry: the Unreal Engine 5.2 does not yet seem to fully exploit processors equipped with a large number of cores and threads. This pitfall will eventually have to be corrected, as these will become commonplace in the future.
Speaking of the future, it would also be in good taste to see games truly running on this promising new generation engine in more ways than one. For now, we don’t have much to eat apart from Layers of Fear released last June and Fort Solis, expected on August 22. It will therefore be necessary to show a little more patience before seeing the Unreal Engine 5 become more democratic.
Source : Digital Foundry on YouTube
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