Epic Games has finally made Unreal Engine 5 fully optimized for use, alongside Lyra, a shooter game utilizing its capabilities. A premier game engine for video game development, Epic plans to have UE5 used to make the very best of open world games, as well as fine-tuning the impact of physics and more dynamic character animations. A "State of Unreal" event was hosted, showing the many prospects of what Unreal Engine 5 is capable of.

Missed all the #StateofUnreal hype - or just want a recap?

Check out all the highlights and big announcements in this video! #UE5 pic.twitter.com/K20WWBCmL2

— Unreal Engine (@UnrealEngine) April 5, 2022

 CD Projekt announced the next game in The Witcher series will use UE5, and many other companies are on board, namely a lot of the studios acquired under the Xbox umbrella, such as Ninja Theory, and Rare. PlayStation VR will also utilize it as well. 

With Lumen, you no longer have to author lightmap UVs, wait for lightmaps to bake, or place reflection captures; you can simply create and edit lights inside the Unreal Editor and see the same final lighting your players will see when the game or experience is run on the target platform.
Not to be outdone, UE5’s new virtualized micropolygon geometry system, Nanite, gives you the ability to create games and experiences with massive amounts of geometric detail. Directly import film-quality source art comprised of millions of polygons—anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans—and place them millions of times, all while maintaining a real-time frame rate, and without any noticeable loss of fidelity.

Lyra Starter Game is a sample gameplay project built alongside UE5 development to serve as an excellent starting point for creating new games. We plan to continue to upgrade it with future releases to demonstrate our latest best practices.

The full article and projected benchmarks for Unreal Engine 5 can be read here.