Unreal Engine 5.2, the latest version of the new engine by Epic, comes with some features that promise to introduce performance improvements and reduce the stuttering issues that plague the vast majority of games powered by Unreal Engine 4.
In a new video shared today, Digital Foundry takes a good look at some of the new features introduced by the latest version of the engine released a few months back, highlighting how the improvements made to procedural generation will not only make it easier for developers to populate their environments with considerably less work but also to boost performance, thanks to a software version of Lumen which performs better than hardware Lumen while providing high-quality visuals, though not as good.
One of the biggest improvements introduced in Unreal Engine 5.2, as highlighted in Digital Foundry's analysis, is an improvement to shader compilation behavior. Specifically, the latest version of the engine improves the asynchronous shader compilation introduced in version 5.1, which eliminates the biggest stutters for much better fluidity. Sadly, it is not enough to get rid of stutters completely, as traversal stutters are still present.
One more interesting thing that Digital Foundry highlights in their Unreal Engine 5.2 analysis is how the engine doesn't yet scale well on CPUs with high core and thread counts, which is disappointing, considering how these CPUs will become more widespread in the future.
Among the few games powered by Unreal Engine 5 currently available on the market is Layers of Fear, a remake of the series developed by Bloober Team. While the game looks gorgeous and runs well for the most part, as I highlighted in my review, it does have some traversal stutters, so it's clear how developers will have to learn to use all the tools offered by the new engine to provide the smoothest possible experience.
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