Unreal Engine 6 teased – Epic emphasizes interoperability and ease of use

Daniel Sims

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Forward-looking: Amid recent presentations promoting upcoming technologies for Unreal Engine 5, Epic Games says it wants to make the toolchain more accessible than ever. At a company event, CEO Tim Sweeney declared Unreal Engine 6 as a major landmark on that road while confirming that he hasn't given up on Epic's metaverse ambitions.

In an interview with The Verge following the recent 2024 Unreal Fest event, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney outlined a crucial goal for Unreal Engine 6, the next-generation version of the company's ubiquitous graphics pipeline. As Epic continues unveiling significant technical updates for Unreal Engine 5, UE6 is thought to be at least several years away from launch.

Sweeney promised that UE6 would merge the advanced development tools used to build games like Fortnite and Black Myth: Wukong with the more accessible user-generated content tools available to Fortnite players. This strategy would complete a process that began with the introduction of Unreal Engine 4.

With UE4, which still sees wide use, Epic started allowing developers of any size to publish games using a toolchain once reserved for traditional studios. The company also recently introduced a kit allowing Fortnite players with no programming or development experience to build various original scenarios. Fortnite's user-generated content suite incorporates some of UE5's game-making tools and can use popular smartphones for facial capture.

In addition to broadening the availability of game development tools, Epic wants to make it easy for users to deploy their creations across as many platforms as possible. Sweeney cited Epic's agreement to help Disney build a persistent virtual experience compatible with Fortnite, saying that UE6 will make such projects possible for developers big and small.

Epic's aim for interoperability and accessibility connects to the company's enduring metaverse ambitions. While Meta continues to lose tens of billions on a concept that the tech industry has largely cooled toward, millions of people continue using games like Fortnite, Minecraft, and Roblox as the digital hangout spaces Meta hopes to build.

Epic hopes to offer a shared platform where users can buy an asset in one store and use it in all three games. Launching later this month, the Fab marketplace promises to host 3D models, environments, audio, and other virtual items that would bundle licenses for use in multiple engines and other development tools.

Although the company hasn't discussed its ambitions with anyone other than Disney, Sweeney hopes that the ability to use purchased items in multiple games will make them more valuable to customers.

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Unreal Engine 6 teased – Epic emphasizes interoperability and ease of use

 
God talk about tone deaf. Tim sweeny doesnt seem to understand that the "metaverse" ws an abject failure. Consumers are tired of constant financialization of everything. And there is SO much more to moving assets then "same game engine" that Tim should be more then well aware of.

What next, he's gonna promise a blockchain? Maybe he shoudl focus on the absolute dogshat performance of UE5 first. UE5 cames constantly underperform even on modern PC hardware, let alone consoles that it was designed for.
 
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I found this channel about poor optimization on Unreal engine it is definitely an Eye opener on how much latency is added from Nanite and other assets for for a significant penalty in hardware performance.


I definitely recommend those interested in game development optimizations to at least look at these videos.
 
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Theinsanegamer said:
God talk about tone deaf. Tim sweeny doesnt seem to understand that the "metaverse" ws an abject failure. Consumers are tired of constant financialization of everything. And there is SO much more to moving assets then "same game engine" that Tim should be more then well aware of.

What next, he's gonna promise a blockchain? Maybe he shoudl focus on the absolute dogshat performance of UE5 first. UE5 cames constantly underperform even on modern PC hardware, let alone consoles that it was designed for.
Click to expand...

UE5 performs great if the developer knows what they're doing. Silent Hill 2 , Throne of Liberty are 2 examples where it performs and looks great on modern builds.
Dont blame the car just because you dont know how to drive.
 
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Ease of use and shortcuts almost always mean bad optimization, games need capable people... it's time to value good programmers and cut the salaries of those leeching executives who have infested the gaming market.
 
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FaTaL said:
UE5 performs great if the developer knows what they're doing. Silent Hill 2 , Throne of Liberty are 2 examples where it performs and looks great on modern builds.
Dont blame the car just because you dont know how to drive.
Click to expand...

Over 80% of AAA games developed on Unreal Engine 5 perform poorly, with the hardware requirements vastly outweighing the quality of graphics displayed on screen.
 
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FaTaL said:
UE5 performs great if the developer knows what they're doing. Silent Hill 2 , Throne of Liberty are 2 examples where it performs and looks great on modern builds.
Dont blame the car just because you dont know how to drive.
Click to expand...
I would say it looks good, not great. And it is not a good reason to kill performance as well. If you look at PS5 ported games like Horizon Forbidden West and GOW, they don't run UE5, but I don't think they look bad when compared to UE5. Yet they are lighter on hardware to run. Then you tend to run into these crappy UE specific shader processing issues.

And to be honest, a game is made to be fun, not to the point that it runs badly on most gaming PCs. I go back to my point made elsewhere, you can make a game look stunning/ lifelike, but less than 5% of gamers will enjoy it because only that population have a powerful enough system. It does not stop that 95% of people to still be able to play the game, but they won't see these eye candy. Then what is the point of making it look great?
 
FaTaL said:
UE5 performs great if the developer knows what they're doing. Silent Hill 2 , Throne of Liberty are 2 examples where it performs and looks great on modern builds.
Dont blame the car just because you dont know how to drive.
Click to expand...

The reason Silent Hill 2 runs good on Nvidia, is because Nvidia can do RT well. The game uses Lumen for software RT (unless you enable hardware RT in the game - Performance hit is low on Nvidia here too)

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/silent-hill-2-fps-performance-benchmark/5.html

As usual, AMD cards buckle when RT is used and you can't disable it.
 
FaTaL said:
and over 80% of 'AAA' games are trash...on a performance and gameplay level.
Click to expand...

Only if you use an AMD GPU. They all run pretty well on Nvidia.

Also 9 out of 10 new games have DLSS, DLAA, DLSS FG at this point. RTX features are in 600+ titles now.

UE5.x is the best and most advanced game engine today. Some developers just don't understand how to tweak and optimize.

It is not Unreal Engines fault that AMD GPUs can't do Ray Tracing good enough really.
Maybe Radeon 8000 will fix the issue. Hopefully.
 
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FaTaL said:
UE5 performs great if the developer knows what they're doing. Silent Hill 2 , Throne of Liberty are 2 examples where it performs and looks great on modern builds.
Dont blame the car just because you dont know how to drive.
Click to expand...

Silent Hill 2 still performs like frozen molasses on intended hardware. Like, look at the TPU analysis. It can't hit 60 FPS on 1440p on ANY AMD GPU. and Nvidia isn't much better in that regard. And at 4K it's even worse, not a single GPU of any brand can get 4K60.
 
nzall said:
Silent Hill 2 still performs like frozen molasses on intended hardware. Like, look at the TPU analysis. It can't hit 60 FPS on 1440p on ANY AMD GPU. and Nvidia isn't much better in that regard. And at 4K it's even worse, not a single GPU of any brand can get 4K60.
Click to expand...
Again AMD GPUs can't do RT well, that is the reason.

Silent Hill 2 is a beautiful game, complete remake in UE5. Lumen is used = Software RT.

I easily get 100-200 fps at 1440p maxed with a 4090, depending on location. Can also break 250 fps at times. Never drop below 100 really.

I use 7800X3D, Techpowerup uses 14900K.
 
Didn't read the article, but I just hope it doesn't require shader compilation as that right now is the biggest pile of crap mechanic I have ever seen and needs to die.
 
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Rapob said:
The reason Silent Hill 2 runs good on Nvidia, is because Nvidia can do RT well. The game uses Lumen for software RT (unless you enable hardware RT in the game - Performance hit is low on Nvidia here too)

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/silent-hill-2-fps-performance-benchmark/5.html

As usual, AMD cards buckle when RT is used and you can't disable it.
Click to expand...
For real... Do you think any GPU is running this well?

For better accuracy, rephrase the sentence to:
"the reason it runs poorly on Nvidia and much worse on AMD GPUs is because it forces unnecessary use of RT, when it doesn't even have the ability to optimize the game to run as it should"
 
Watzupken said:
I would say it looks good, not great. And it is not a good reason to kill performance as well. If you look at PS5 ported games like Horizon Forbidden West and GOW, they don't run UE5, but I don't think they look bad when compared to UE5. Yet they are lighter on hardware to run. Then you tend to run into these crappy UE specific shader processing issues.

And to be honest, a game is made to be fun, not to the point that it runs badly on most gaming PCs. I go back to my point made elsewhere, you can make a game look stunning/ lifelike, but less than 5% of gamers will enjoy it because only that population have a powerful enough system. It does not stop that 95% of people to still be able to play the game, but they won't see these eye candy. Then what is the point of making it look great?
Click to expand...
Don't look bad?

forbidden west and gow are gorgeous games, and whatever ubi uses, dunia? is also a looker, but those may all be helped by wonderful artistic direction also, and also devs who know them inside and out.

unreal just runs like a dog it seems, its crazy to me my system with a 4080 can push so many great looking non UE games at 4k60 pretty much maxed out without breaking a sweat, then a UE game pops up and I hear fans going, the picture is all juttery and I have to start fiddling with settings for a few hours.

imho UE is overly heavy and crappy.
 
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UE5 seems very demanding for these consoles. I remember the Matrix Demo late 2021, it really struggled and that was foreboding for the future, which has now arrived. UE5 games render at very low resolutions and lean on heavy upscaling.

Almost as if Epic didn't get the memo of the finalised console hardware in 2020 and shot too high. They need to stop adding ever more demanding features and spend a year working intensively on optimizing what they do have.
 
Optimizations should be the main thing in U6.
I do not see anything revolutionary compared to U5.
It seems like it is just an update, a U5.5
Bigger worlds with bigger polygons should run
on the same hardware, with more NPCs
relying on the same CPU power.
 
DanteSmith said:
Over 80% of AAA games developed on Unreal Engine 5 perform poorly, with the hardware requirements vastly outweighing the quality of graphics displayed on screen.
Click to expand...
Over 80% of all AAA games perform poorly. Not something unique to UE5.
 
Phylop said:
Over 80% of all AAA games perform poorly. Not something unique to UE5.
Click to expand...

Because more and more games / engines uses ray tracing in some form (plus other advanced features)

This is what developers want, so they don't have to do fake lighting etc.

UE5 uses Lumen which is software RT. The RT on/off switch in the game, just changes between hardware and software RT.

And this is why it is crucial for AMD to improve their RT performance. AMD said officially that RT performance is a focus with Radeon 8000 series, so they are working on it.
 
Felusy said:
Because more and more games / engines uses ray tracing in some form (plus other advanced features)

This is what developers want, so they don't have to do fake lighting etc.

UE5 uses Lumen which is software RT. The RT on/off switch in the game, just changes between hardware and software RT.

And this is why it is crucial for AMD to improve their RT performance. AMD said officially that RT performance is a focus with Radeon 8000 series, so they are working on it.
Click to expand...
You have a very misconception about how lighting is implemented in games.
 
DanteSmith said:
You have a very misconception about how lighting is implemented in games.
Click to expand...
Not really, I have been working close with many pc game developers for years and I have seen most popular engine deep dives.

RT will be used in more and more games, hardware or software, going forward. This is reality. Already happening.
 
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