Epic Releases Unreal Engine 5 Alongside Sample Projects

After being released in early access last year, Epic has fully released Unreal Engine 5. Available for download, the complete edition includes the dynamic global illumination solution Lumen, the upsampling system Temporal Super Resolution, and several other tools that are designed to increase fidelity in video game projects.

Artists will benefit from a redesigned Unreal Editor, which includes "better performance, artist-friendly animation tools, an extended mesh creation and editing toolset, improved path tracing, and much more," according to Epic. "One of our ongoing goals is to make the creation of open worlds faster, easier, and more collaborative for teams of all sizes."

In addition to all that, developers can experiment with the software through two sample projects, Lyra Starter Game and City Sample. Epic says that these samples include buildings, vehicles, and crowds of Metahuman characters in a complete city that are designed to showcase the improved systems in Unreal Engine 5 and provide a hands-on learning resource.

That content will be available in separate packs so that developers can download and experiment with the assets, and Epic will also release paid and free Unreal Engine 5-related content on the Unreal Marketplace.

Epic's livestream today revealed that over 85 game studios have made the transition to Unreal Engine 5, which includes CD Projekt Red for its next Witcher game. Crystal Dynamics announced that a new Tomb Raider is in development and will also be using Unreal Engine 5.