Epic has released Unreal Engine 5.7 to developers. This new version of the leading commercially available game-making engine introduces several improvements over previous releases, as well as some new features.
For example, the MegaLights feature, which was previously tagged as Experimental in earlier UE5 builds, has now moved to Beta. With it, developers are allowed to inject a much greater number of dynamic, shadow-casting lights into the scenes of their games to achieve effects such as realistic soft shadows from complex light sources, like area lights. This more scalable lighting workflow enables them to work more intuitively and create larger, richer, and more intricate worlds than ever before.
Unreal Engine 5.7 also delivers a significant enhancement to visual fidelity, offering new support for directional lights, translucency, shadow casting for Niagara particles, and more accurate shading and shadowing on hair. Epic says developers can also expect better out-of-the-box performance, improved noise reduction, and reduced need for manual optimization of lights.
Another highlight of Unreal Engine 5.7 is undoubtedly Nanite Foliage (available as an Experimental feature). Previously, Nanite could not be used with foliage, but that's changed thanks to a new geometry rendering system powered by the so-called Nanite Voxels. These automatically and efficiently draw millions of tiny, overlapping elements that appear as a solid mass from a distance, such as tree canopies, pine needles, and ground clutter. This is achieved at stable frame rates, without cross-fades or pops, and without the need to author LODs. Nanite Foliage also uses Nanite Assemblies to reduce storage, memory and rendering costs, as well as using Nanite Skinning to determine dynamic behaviours such as wind response.
The new Unreal Engine 5 also offers an updated Procedural Content Generation (PCG) framework. It's now production-ready, featuring improved GPU performance and a new Editor Mode for easier customization.
This build provides developers with a production-ready version of Substrate, the system designed for creating complex, high-fidelity, physically accurate layered and blended materials. Lastly, Unreal Engine 5.7 adds an AI Assistant that provides helpful guidance directly in the Editor. A dedicated slide-out panel lets the user ask questions, generate C++ code, or access step-by-step guidance without having to leave the Editor.
There are many more fixes and improvements to other systems, such as Metahumans and the animation toolset, as well as CPU and GPU performance improvements. Read everything on this page.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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