Digital Foundry : Epic Games has revealed that Unreal Engine 5 has gone into early access, with the revised engine available to the public complete with a new demo project to play around with. John Linneman and Alex Battaglia talk about the technology and what we've learned from the reveal. More to come on this after we've gone hands on!
Wave goodbye to Early Access because MetaHuman Creator 5.6 is now fully integrated into Unreal Engine and ready to go. The new MetaHuman update brings unmatched fidelity, a large scan database, and advanced authoring workflows for faces, bodies, and clothing. Use tools like the expression editor to assist with facial expressions and the groom tool to reconfigure the fine details of your character's hair. What's more, MetaHuman Animator now generates real-time animation from almost any camera or audio source. Now, MetaHuman characters and animation work seamlessly in any Engine, including Unity, Godot, Maya, Houdini, and Blender.
Unreal Engine 5.6 is here! Build super-high-fidelity, large-scale open worlds that run smoothly at 60 FPS on current-generation hardware and discover true engine-first animation, rigging, and MetaHuman authoring workflows. Access essential tools faster, stay organized, and take advantage of powerful procedural and cinematic updates—everything you need to reach production sooner.
Unreal Engine 5 is the most popular game engine of 2025. Of course, it has its flaws, particularly concerning Nanite and Lumen, but the Epic logo is prominent among the most popular titles. Recent hits to feature UE5 include Clair Obscure, Oblivion Remastered, Runescape, Delta Force, Fragpunk, Split Fiction, InZOI, etc.
Damn, the games to be created with this for the 9th gen consoles will truly be... "epic".
30fps on console? lol I hope that's because this is very early access. Because I'm sure as hell when the first Unreal Engine 5 game does come out, it will be 60fps or much higher on PC with settings max. Don't know if we will have new GPUs from Nvidia and AMD this year, with the GPU crisis still going on that would be a dumb move.
Very impressive engine - looks gorgeous.
Hell with graphics like that, id play a Rock Simulator
My reaction was that VR is going to be amazing. Totally "Unreal."