After publicly announcing its new Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) in May 2020, gamers are still waiting for the technology to hit the mainstream. Currently, there are no UE5 games available to play, and the earliest release date for the first UE5 game is expected to be at the end of 2023. Despite this, Epic Games has showcased UE5’s latest capabilities with various demos at the recent Game Developers Conference 2023 (GDC 2023).
One of the impressive demos showcased Epic’s new tool that promises to enable indie developers to access realistic facial capture by using an iPhone to capture facial performance. The tool would allow close-up videos of actors to be quickly and accurately transformed into in-game models that developers can use. The animator is expected to launch in the summer of 2023.
UE5’s enhancements were also showcased in a demo that featured a digital recreation of the Rivian R1T electric truck. The demo showcased UE5’s new Substrate shading system, which allows artists to create different shading models and layer them as they see fit. It also highlighted Epic’s new set of Procedural Content Generation tools, which enable artists to create highly detailed levels from a small set of hand-crafted assets.
If all goes as planned, the first slate of UE5 games will arrive soon, with The Last of Us Part III expected to release this year. Lords of the Fallen and Alien: Isolation 2, both UE5 projects, do not have a release date yet but have been in development for a few years now.
