Epic Games Officially Launches Unreal Engine 5

During Tuesday’s State of Unreal livestreamed virtual event, Epic Games announced that Unreal Engine 5 is now available for production-ready use – marking a generational leap in technological capabilities and workflows delivered to millions of creators across games, entertainment, and beyond. Check out this Unreal Engine blog post for more info on UE5 and read the full release notes for an in-depth look at the new features and enhancements.

Although some major new features like Lumen and Nanite have not yet been validated for non-games workflows (this is an ongoing goal for future releases), all creators will be able to continue using workflows supported in UE 4.27. According to the Unreal Engine blog post, they will also benefit from a redesigned Unreal Editor, better performance, artist-friendly animation tools, an extended mesh creation and editing toolset, improved path tracing, and much more. See the documentation for full details.

Production-proven in Fortnite and The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience demo, UE5’s many feature and performance improvements enable users to create next-generation real-time 3D content and experiences with greater freedom, fidelity, and flexibility than ever before.

Previously accessible in Early Access and Preview releases, Unreal Engine 5.0 is available today for download from the Epic Games launcher. UE5 includes groundbreaking features Nanite and Lumen for bringing incredibly realistic interactive experiences to life, plus new systems for creating massive open worlds, and new developer-friendly authoring tools and workflows to speed up the creative process.

Alongside UE5, Epic is releasing two new sample projects: the Lyra Starter Game and a City Sample from The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience.
The Lyra Starter Game is a sample gameplay project available as a free download. Designed to serve as a starting point for building and shipping UE5 games, Lyra is a hands-on learning resource that incorporates many key engine features, includes multiple maps and modes, and comes with a fully networked multiplayer environment. Epic will continually update this living project alongside future UE5 releases.

The City Sample is a free sample project that reveals how the large open world from The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience was built. The project—which consists of a complete city with buildings, vehicles, and crowds of MetaHuman characters—demonstrates how UE5’s new systems and workflows made building this experience possible.

As developers from independent teams to AAA powerhouses create their next-generation games, Epic has confirmed that over 85 game studios are already part of the UE5 community, with more on the way—representing a deeply talented pool of creative and technical talent around the world. This group includes The Coalition, CD PROJEKT RED, Crystal Dynamics, and many other world-class teams.