Epic Games Unveils Unreal Engine 5, Coming in 2021 With Mac and iOS Support

[MacRumors]

Epic Games today unveiled Unreal Engine 5, the newest iteration of its game engine that's used by game developers for many high-profile games. A demo video running on a developer version of the PS5 hardware shows what Unreal Engine 5 is capable of.

Unreal Engine 5 focuses on photorealism that's on par with movie CG and real life, and it will be released in 2021. Unreal Engine 5 will support current-generation consoles, next-generation consoles, PCs, Macs, iOS, and Android.

Epic Games detailed two new core technologies that will be coming in Unreal Engine 5, including Nanite virtualized geometry for importing film-quality source art directly into Unreal Engine as virtualized textures and Lumen, a fully dynamic global illumination system designed to react to scene and light changes, which will allow for more realistic shadows and rendering of moving light sources.

Unreal Engine 5 has been designed to make it easy for development teams of all sizes to take advantage of content libraries and tools to create games with unprecedented levels of detail and interactivity.

In addition to Unreal Engine 5, Epic today announced a change to how its royalties work. Developers are now able to keep all royalties for the first $1 million in sales generated, and then it will take five percent of sales after that. Previously, Epic collected royalties on all games after the first $3000 in sales.

Epic is also launching Epic Online Services, an online multi-platform game management system that was originally created for Fortnite. Epic Online Services provides developers with tools for cross-platform matchmaking and account management.

Article Link: Epic Games Unveils Unreal Engine 5, Coming in 2021 With Mac and iOS Support

 

[sublunar]

While this is great news for games, I'm looking more close to see how this is used in film and TV show production - the Mandalorian is an example of what can be done.

 

[Luap]

"Unreal" Engine, but no new Unreal Tournament? Its been like, 12 years! 😢

 

[NBAasDOGG]

Nice, can’t wait to play as the Kardashians using Unreal Engine 5 on my iToy....

 

[samelot628]

Most excited for the intelligent flocking

 

[Treq]

Stargate 3 Confirmed!

 

[Blackstick]

I've yet to meet the 8 gamers who play on macOS... I assume most have a console or gaming PC.

 

[kissmo]

OMG this is awesome. I hope next gen GPUs will runs smooth. It literally looks like in a movie.
For Mac - I expect crippled functionality unless you have a Mac Pro or an external GPU.

Sticking to windows for gaming.

 

[Internet Enzyme]

I've yet to meet the 8 gamers who play on macOS... I assume most have a console or gaming PC.

Stardew Valley, Minecraft, Terraria, and Hotline Miami all still work on Catalina, not even to mention the whole Apple Arcade library. Granted, these aren’t AAA games, but they do exist and have a decent fan base on macOS

 

[Villarrealadrian]

Impressive technology cant wait to see it used in VR!

 

[MrUNIMOG]

Stardew Valley, Minecraft, Terraria, and Hotline Miami all still work on Catalina, not even to mention the whole Apple Arcade library. Granted, these aren’t AAA games, but they do exist and have a decent fan base on macOS

Well, there’s like a thousand games that work on Catalina. And lots of AAA.

 

[pweicks]

Welp, lets see how well it looks and runs when it’s running a REAL video game. Like where there’s guns, explosions, stats, achievement tracking, AI, sprinting, jumping and the other 99 players that you’re playing online with. Along with 100+ GBs of maps, characters and engine that has to be QAed and maintained. Most video games consist of more than just pacing through a canyon. I bet in several years when Unreal 6 is released, we still won’t have any released games that look and run this well.

It looks great, but video games never end up looking as good as they do on these “first look” trailers when you actually play it on your TV in your bedroom.

 

[acastic]

I've yet to meet the 8 gamers who play on macOS... I assume most have a console or gaming PC.

I'm one of them! I enjoy Tomb Raider, Civ 6, Endless Legend, Diablo 3, Warcraft 3 Reforged, Starcraft 2, Borderlands 1-3, Divinity Original Sin 1 & 2, XCOM 2, and Company of Heroes 2 among others. Plenty to play on my 16" Macbook Pro

That being said, I wish Apple would actually care about Mac OS gaming. It's really a shame that they don't.

 

[mattopotamus]

Welp, lets see how well it looks and runs when it’s running a REAL video game. Like where there’s guns, explosions, stats, achievement tracking, AI, sprinting, jumping and the other 99 players that you’re playing online with. Along with 100+ GBs of maps, characters and engine that has to be QAed and maintained. Most video games consist of more than just pacing through a canyon. I bet in several years when Unreal 6 is released, we still won’t have any released games that look and run this well.

It looks great, but video games never end up looking as good as they do on these “first look” trailers when you actually play it on your TV in your bedroom.

At least it was actual gameplay compared to the joke Microsoft put on.

 

[A MacBook lover]

OMG this is awesome. I hope next gen GPUs will runs smooth. It literally looks like in a movie.
For Mac - I expect crippled functionality unless you have a Mac Pro or an external GPU.

Sticking to windows for gaming.

MacBook Pro 16 inch would like a word with you.

I run bootcamp windows, and play almost every game maxed out.

CoD Warzone? Maxed out
Apex Legends? Maxed out

 

[RONS67]

How can a player self-identify with a robot? IMHO they needed to do more to make the body appearance and movements more natural. Even if the scenes looked fake, if the body looked and moved naturally, it would be believable. Kind of like how a poor quality video is watchable if the audio is high quality, but a high quality video is unwatchable if the audio quality is poor.

 

[Populus]

I want to see better games for iOS devices... Hopefully Unreal Engine 5 makes it easier.

I’m eager to see what they can achieve with Fortnite running with UE5 on my iPad Pro.

 

[casperes1996]

I've yet to meet the 8 gamers who play on macOS... I assume most have a console or gaming PC.

Hello!
I've played a bunch of games on my Macs. Feral ports especially run really well actually. Aspyr ports generally not so much, but at least they run. Lots of good stuff out there. - And no I have no console or gaming PC, but I have had Windows installed on my Macs for the non-macOS compatible games, but still running on my Macs.

 

[Erwin-Br]

Would it use Metal? Or Vulkan?

 

[casperes1996]

Would it use Metal? Or Vulkan?

UE4 has Metal support, I believe it is still an experimental feature, but it's there. - I assume UE5 will continue with Metal support. Using Vulkan will effectively be using Metal on macOS regardless though

 

[mrkite77]

Stardew Valley, Minecraft, Terraria, and Hotline Miami all still work on Catalina,

Umm... not in my experience.

 

[Rocko99991]

Have not been a gamer for years, but holy mackerel does this look great!

 

[D.T.]

JFC. Having done some time in the AR/VR/3D space, including using (previous versions) of the Unreal Engine (and Unity as you might expect), some of this is simply __astounding__.

 

[Sharewaredemon]

I've yet to meet the 8 gamers who play on macOS... I assume most have a console or gaming PC.

Nice to meet you.

 

[Moonjumper]

It will be interesting to see how much of this can be kept when scaled down to iOS/iPadOS.