Some Unreal Engine 5 features, such as Lumen and Nanite, can significantly improve visuals in certain scenarios, but their performance is rather considerable.
A new comparison video shared by Cycu1 put the Medieval Fantasy Ruins tech demo by Scans Factory running with Lumen and Nanite and with the standard pipeline side-by-side, highlighting the visual improvements brought by Lumen and Nanite but also their impact on performance. At 1080p resolution, on an RTX 4080, the demo drops from the over 120 FPS of the standard pipeline to the 40, 50 FPS range with Lumen and Nanite at 1080p resolution. This tech demo obviously hasn't received the same optimization a game would receive, but it is becoming clear how current gaming hardware cannot handle Unreal Engine 5's most impressive features properly.
While current generation consoles are having trouble running games using Unreal Engine 5's Lumen and Nanite, things could change in the near future with the PlayStation 5 Pro, whose better specs and increased ray tracing performance could allow the system, for example, to use hardware Lumen and provide console players with a taste of what is possible to do already on PC.
The latest version of Unreal Engine 5 is version 5.4, which introduced some performance improvements. More information can be found on its official website.
About the author: Francesco De Meo has been covering video games and technology since 2012, starting his career at small outlets like Gamersyndrome and GeekSnack. After joining Wccftech gaming section in 2015, he quickly expanded his video gaming coverage with in-depth reporting, interviews with iconic industry figures such as Grasshopper Manufacture founder and No More Heroes creator Goichi "Suda51" Suda, Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami, Team NINJA's president and Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda, and Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama, reviews and on-the-ground coverage of major industry events such as Gamescom and E3. When he's not reporting or reviewing, Francesco can be found playing the genres he loves most, spending time with his six cats, reading, writing music, playing guitar and drumming for his progressive rock band.
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