Epic Games held a presentation as part of the Unreal Fest festival, where they talked about the innovations in Unreal Engine 5.5. Guests were shown an experimental realistic lighting technology called MegaLights.
The technology allows for creating believable environments using more than a thousand light sources. In the presented demonstration, one can see a heroine moving through locations where screens and lamps are placed everywhere.
The hosts specifically emphasized that the tech demo was running in real-time on a regular PlayStation 5. The preview version of Unreal Engine 5.5 is already available.
The new version of Unreal Engine 5 will also feature improved rendering, faster Nanite performance when processing skeletal meshes, and path tracing technology. According to the company, these technologies are already being used in cinematography — at least they are present in the animated film Piece by piece about singer Pharrell Williams.