What’s New in Unreal Engine 5.1

3 minutes read

Unreal Engine 5.1 is a major update to the game engine, featuring a range of new features and improvements. The main focus of this release is on performance, with improved load times and better memory usage. There are also new features such as ray tracing support, improved animation tools, more efficient particle systems and enhanced post-processing capabilities. Additionally, the Unreal Editor has been redesigned for better usability and there are new tools such as AI-assisted level building for faster asset creation. The engine also now supports Vulkan on all platforms including iOS & Android. Finally, Epic has released an SDK for developers to create their own custom nodes in the Material Editor.

List of New Major Features in Unreal Engine 5.1

Unreal Engine 5.1 is a major update to the Unreal Engine, bringing several new features and improvements. The major new features of this version include: 

1. Nanite virtualized geometry system: This system allows for incredibly detailed environments with billions of polygons, resulting in photorealistic visuals. 

2. Lumen dynamic global illumination: Lumen offers real-time global illumination that reacts to scene changes, allowing for more realistic lighting effects. 

3. DirectX Raytracing: This feature brings hardware-accelerated ray tracing capabilities to Unreal Engine 5, allowing developers to create more realistic visuals and lighting effects while taking advantage of the latest GPU technologies from Nvidia and AMD. 

4. New audio engine improvements: The new audio engine adds support for spatial audio processing, improved sound propagation modeling, and better support for game engines on next-gen consoles such as PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. 

5. Animation tools enhancements: Updates have been made to animation tools such as the Sequencer timeline editor, making it easier to create cinematic experiences in UE5 projects with improved workflow efficiency and accuracy when working with animations or cinematics sequences within Sequencer timelines or Matinee cut scenes editors .  

6 . Expanded live link plugin support : Live Link now supports a wider range of applications including Autodesk Maya , Adobe After Effects , Unity 3D , Substance Painter , Marmoset Toolbag 4 , Houdini 17+ , Cinema 4D R21+, Blender 2 . 83 + . This allows developers to connect their favorite 3D applications directly into Unreal Engine projects for assets management or real time data synchronization purposes . 

7 . Template Projects : Template Projects are designed provide an easily customizable starting point for creating games quickly in UE5 with preconfigured example scenes that contain sample characters , materials , particle systems etc…  

8 . Platform Support : UE5 supports all major platforms including PC ( Windows & Mac ) Linux ( SteamOS ) iOS & Android ( ARM64 ) Nintendo Switch Sony PlayStation 5 Microsoft Xbox Series X | S Google Stadia Amazon Luna Apple ARKit / ARCore Oculus Quest 2 HTC VIVE / Cosmos Valve Index Samsung Gear VR etc…

If you want to read up on more of the details I suggest a look at the UE5.1 docs

What is Next for Unreal Engine 5

The next update for Unreal Engine 5 is likely to focus on improving the engine's rendering capabilities, particularly in terms of lighting and shadows. Additionally, it is likely to include improvements to the audio system, such as adding more realistic reverb and echo effects. It may also include new tools for developers, such as a tool that allows them to easily create custom shaders or a tool that helps them optimize their game performance. Finally, it is likely that the next update will include more bug fixes and improvements to stability.


I Did Not Write This

Everything above this is written by GPT3 (davinci-003). I wanted to see how much, or at all, it had improved since GPT2. I never had the opportunity to work with the largest GPT2 model but I did a lot of research and work with the medium size one. The difference is pretty big, even with a lot of fine-tuning, tweaking and running 20 passes and selecting the best one, GPT2 never came close to the quality of GPT3.

To get the results above I simply made one single prompt for each paragraph and it came out like this. Bing is now using this tech and Google is desperately trying to come up with a solution of their own. It will be interesting to see what will happen next.

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