Unreal Engine 5 is now available and you can download it for free

After being in beta for over a year, the final version of Unreal Engine 5 is here . During the “The State of Unreal 2023” event, Epic Games confirmed that the new generation of its graphics engine is now available to everyone. In fact, you can download it yourself for free through the company’s launcher , which you can get from the following link.

Unreal Engine 5 is a significant leap from the previous version. The tool, which for many years has been the technical basis of many video games —including film and TV productions— now takes advantage of the potential of next-gen consoles and, of course, of the most modern GPUs for computers. Also, Epic Games promises to keep it updated to add new features constantly.

Among the main novelties of Unreal Engine 5 stands out, for example, the Nanite technology , with which artists will have the opportunity to model objects with an overwhelming level of detail . This is thanks to the fact that it can render billions of polygons. Of course, there is support for external applications, such as ZBrush, so that it is possible to import models and use them in the projects of the engine.

We can’t leave out Lumen , a dynamic global illumination technique that works in a similar way to Ray Tracing. With it, you will be able to generate diffuse interreflections with infinite bounces to give a higher level of realism to the scenarios. With this solution, the process of creating light maps was left behind. Epic says that Lumen works in both small and large environments, so you’ll likely see it working in open world games in the near future.

Unreal Engine 5 is ready to build open worlds

And speaking of open worlds, never before has an Epic Games graphics engine given so much importance to this type of environment. This is mainly because open world games have become too popular in the last decade. Thus, Unreal Engine 5 offers the necessary resources and tools to build huge worlds , interactive and with the possibility of expanding if necessary.

Not least, Unreal Engine 5 debuts a redesigned user interface to improve workflow. Epic points out that it is faster, more efficient and easier to use, features that any developer looks for in such a complex tool.

Finally, it’s important to say that Epic is offering two free sample projects for Unreal Engine 5. The first, called Lyra , is a multiplayer experience that can serve as the foundation for building a more robust online game. The other, City Sample , is the impressive open world that we already saw in The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience for PlayStation 5. “The project, which consists of a city complete with buildings, vehicles and multitudes of MetaHuman characters, demonstrates how We use the new and improved Unreal Engine 5 systems to create the experience.

Although Unreal Engine 5 is available to the public today, there are several video game studios that have been using it for a long time to create their new games. This is the case of CD Projekt Red, which used Epic’s tool to undertake the development of the new The Witcher . Crystal Dynamics, meanwhile, is using Unreal Engine 5 to bring the next installment of Tomb Raider to life . Over time we will get to know many more titles that will follow the same path.