The Unreal Engine 5 early access version launched in late May, allowing countless developers to go hands-on with the new features such as Nanite and Lumen. Developers like Ninja Theory, XL Games, The Coalition, Myrkur Games, Game Science, Square Enix, inXile, and GSC Game World already pledged their support to Unreal Engine 5, but there are also many indie creators dabbling with UE5 now.

　　Epic Games recently published a community highlight reel to showcase what these talented developers can do with Unreal Engine 5's Nanite, Lumen, and MetaHuman creator tools. Check out the video below.

　　Here's a recap of the main Unreal Engine 5 features. Epic is planning to release the full version at some point in early 2022.

Nanite

　　Imagine directly importing film-quality source art comprised of millions of polygons—anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans—and placing them millions of times, all while maintaining a real-time frame rate, and without any noticeable loss of fidelity. Impossible? Not any more!

Lumen

　　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 as when the game is run on console.

Open worlds

　　First up, there’s a new World Partition system that automatically divides the world into a grid and streams the necessary cells when required. Then, there’s a new One File Per Actor system that makes collaboration easier—you and your team members can now work simultaneously on the same region of the same World without treading on each other’s toes.

　　Finally, Data Layers let you create different variations of the same World—such as daytime and nighttime versions, or specific datasets that are enabled through gameplay—as layers that exist in the same space.