Epic Games has fully released the newest version of their industry leading engine, Unreal Engine 5.

Teased over two years ago, Unreal Engine 5 is available now for all developers to download and play around with. The latest version of the engine contains numerous improvements one would expect, including better performance and a more intuitive AI. However, the big lure of Unreal Engine 5 are new technologies aimed at delivering more photorealistic visuals.

Leading the charge is Lumen, a dynamic global illumination solution that allows lighting to adapt to changes in lighting or geometry. Meaning, developers no longer have to place lighting UVs, bake lightmaps, or place reflection captures. Then there's Nanite, which enables developers to insert objects with with massive amounts of geometric detail without resulting in performance issues or loss in visual fidelity.

There's also a new open world toolset that makes creating open world faster and easier, built-in character and animation tools aimed at decreasing the time-consuming nature of animating, and an enhanced toolset for modeling, UV editing, and baking among other updated and enhanced features.

To celebrate the launch, Epic is rolling out a bunch of starter content to help developers kick-off their projects. These include the Lyra Starter Game and the City Sample, which reveals how Epic built the city scene from the The Matrix Awakens tech demo.

Unreal Engine 5 is expected to take off quickly with developers. A new Tomb Raider title, a new Witcher title, Fortnite, Black Myth: Wukong, Dragon Quest XII: The Flames of Fate, and Redfall are just a few of the titles currently being built with Unreal Engine 5.