The latest version of Unreal Engine, among other things, targets a goal of 60 FPS for its high-end graphics technology.
Between the rise of asset virtualization and the emergence of real-time ray-tracing, video game graphics technology is on the cusp of a revolution. Leading the charge forward is Epic Games with its Unreal Engine software, a package that just got its version 5.3 update.
Unreal Engine 5 has two major rendering components that underpin the biggest graphical advancements since Unreal Engine 4. Those are the Nanite virtual geometry system and the Lumen path-tracing engine. So far, there have only been two games to date that shipped with both technologies available: Epic’s own Fortnite, and Ascendant Studios‘ Immortals of Aveum. Both games are extremely demanding, with Fortnite resorting to low-detail software-based Lumen on consoles.
The idea of Lumen and Nanite forcing next-gen games to fall back to 30 FPS again despite the powerful Zen 2-based CPUs and RDNA 2 GPUs in the current-generation consoles has been much-discussed. The first public demonstration of these technologies, which was the Matrix Awakens demo, struggled to maintain even 30 FPS on the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. It seemed a given that developers would have to target a low framerate cap to make use of these gorgeous visuals.
