Since the release of Unreal Engine 5, it has been touted as a revolution in gaming. Unfortunately, in practice, players have received products with dreadful optimisation, especially on weaker platforms. Games often looked little better than titles from UE4, but ran decidedly worse. The culprits? Some point to the developers, while others blame the engine itself – particularly its Lumen and Nanite systems.
Unreal Engine 5.7 – Epic promises improvement
Epic Games has just presented Unreal Engine 5.7, and the main highlight of the new features is performance enhancements. Procedural Content Generation (PCG) is said to work almost twice as fast as in UE 5.5, as confirmed by tests from Guru3D. The new version is also expected to make better use of GPU and CPU resources, which in theory should translate to more stable game performance.
New features: Nanite Foliage and MegaLights
UE 5.7 is not just an optimisation. The engine has gained Nanite Foliage – the implementation of Nanite for vegetation – and an improved lighting system MegaLights, which aims to provide more realistic lighting effects. Currently, the version is still in the testing phase (Preview), but the changes look promising.
Will players finally breathe a sigh of relief?
The question is: will this be enough for players to stop complaining about Unreal Engine 5? Recent releases show just how big of a problem this is – Borderlands 4 has received a huge wave of criticism precisely for poor optimisation. If UE 5.7 actually delivers on Epic's promises, we might finally get productions that not only look good but also run without frustration.
