Lumen is a fully dynamic global illumination solution that lets users create dynamic, believable scenes. Nanite intelligently streams and processes only the detail you can perceive, largely removing poly count and draw call constraints, and eliminating time-consuming tasks such as baking details to normal maps and manually authoring LODs-freeing you up to concentrate on creativity. Directly import film-quality source assets comprised of millions of polygons and place them millions of times, all while maintaining a real-time frame rate, and without any noticeable loss of fidelity.

Our new Nanite virtualized micropolygon system lets users create games with massive, unprecedented amounts of geometric detail. Some notable upcoming UE5-powered titles include new Witcher, Tomb Raider, as well as Gears of War games plus a few MMORPGs like Ashes of Creation and Bellatores.Key features in UE5 Early Access include: Nanite

Hopefully, Epic can fix these problems before the first UE5 games hit the market later this year.

Additionally, the experience becomes quite stuttery once the perspective shifts to 3rd person vehicle driving. The CPU does not get utilized too much either, meaning that the UE5 demo relies heavily on the GPU. AJ Gaming ran the demo in 1440p on a system integrating an Intel i9-12900K + RTX 3090 combo and the fps counter barely goes above 50. Some problems could admittedly be expected with low to mid-range GPUs, yet even the RTX 3090 is struggling to achieve 60 fps in the Matrix Awakening demo. Thanks to VoxelPlugin creator Victor Careil, PC users can download the 17 GB Matrix Awakens UE5 project, but it looks like the new game engine is not particularly well optimized for the PC master race, as YouTuber AJ Gaming has encountered some glaring performance issues.

Unlike previous iterations, Unreal Engine 5 is now completely free to download and it also comes with a sample project based on the Matrix Awakens demo that was initially released on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S last December.

Unreal engine 5 tech demo download