Fortnite Chapter 4 launched over the weekend and while it came with a liquorice allsorts batch of content that doesn’t have much direction, the game also updated much of its technical systems running on Unreal Engine 5. I am not a Fortnite player but I had to download the game just to see what all the fuss was about and it is glorious. The latest Fortnite chapter has added the final touches to the game’s Unreal Engine build making it the most comprehensive Unreal Engine 5 game you can play at the moment.
The best news of all, this content is available on consoles too and so far, we haven’t seen a video game push the boundaries as far as Fortnite when it comes to its visual systems.
READ MORE – Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Release Date Leaked on Steam
For starters, the update added Nanite, Lumen, Virtual Shadow Maps and Temporal Super Resolution support into the game. These are all visual features which make up Unreal Engine 5’s advanced rendering systems. Nanite is Epic Games’ highly-detailed architectural geometry. Lumen is high-quality ray tracing used across glossy materials and water. Virtual Shadow Maps allow for highly-detailed shadowing around objects. Lastly, TSR, or Temporal Super Resolution allows for high-quality visuals to be implemented at a higher frame rate.
All of this adds up and acts as a giant step for Unreal Engine 5 to surpass anything it has been capable of in the past. The results are astonishing. These images were taken from the Xbox Series X version of the game running the latest update in Fortnite Chapter 4.
While the console versions are impressive, the PC version, of course, does push things a bit further thanks to the power of dedicated GPUs. You can benefit from an improvement on Lumen specifically allowing for better ray tracing across the entire game. Lighting bounces around a room accurately and reflections on water surfaces are highly detailed. Here’s a video below showcasing some of the PC features running on an RTX 3060 Ti:
The updates to the game also prove what is possible in Unreal Engine 5 from a design point of view. Epic Games says that everything is bigger, and more advanced and uses new technical features to achieve a next-gen visual aesthetic. For example, trees now have around 300,000 polygons. That’s more than most games used to have back in the day. Epic Games says that every stone, every flower and every blade of grass is now a 3D model instead of an image.
Of course, you’re only really getting to experience this tech if you’re playing on the PS5, Xbox Series X or PC version of Fornite. Epic Games also says that PC players with an RTX 2080 and Radeon 5700 will see the benefit.
Lastly, here’s a cool video of and improved fire engine in Fortnite:
bro the new fire goes CRAZY pic.twitter.com/bV6WlUWcmt
— 12th Hour (@l2thhour) December 4, 2022
