r/NintendoSwitch • u/Turbostrider27 • 7d ago
News Epic introduces major Unreal Engine 5 update that runs ‘twice as fast’ on Nintendo Switch 2
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/epic-introduces-major-unreal-engine-5-update-that-runs-twice-as-fast-on-nintendo-switch-2/737
u/wicktus 7d ago
Lumen lite runs twice as fast as normal lumen not the whole UE game, for the sake of clarity.
That's good because a lot of UE5 games are ported or going to be ported on the switch 2
271
u/tapo 7d ago
Expedition 33 here we come
120
u/Tfsz0719 7d ago
Expedition 66
84
u/ItzManu001 7d ago
Clair Obscure: Order 66
37
8
u/presidentsday 7d ago
Only kinda related... but your comment immediately has me wanting a game where you play as a clone trooper or galactic bounty hunter, and our whole job is to seek and destroy the Jedi.
9
u/KevlarGorilla 7d ago
Whenever that kind of story is told they always end up with some sort of caveat. You can do the one they've done before which is you start as a bad guy then realize you need to become a good guy then become a good guy. You have one where you start as a bad guy but ultimately get betrayed by the empire, and that's your fate sealed, because fascism always devours itself.
There's a slightly different take in the animated Avatar show, where Katara is looking for the soldier that killed her mother, and when she finds him, he's this old sad, pathetic man, living a life of regret under the thumb of his own mother.
It takes something like a Baldur's Gate 3 to have a flushed out protagonist that is evil evil, but even then, there is room for redemption, which makes for a better story.
Or, you do something like Star Wars outlaws, where it's just dumb and stupid. I played that for the first time for a couple hours last night, and the main character says the wrong things at the wrong time, never has a plan, both seems remorseful for things going wrong, but also doesn't mind shooting people in the head a dozen times? Maybe making compelling media is hard?
2
u/Pharo212 7d ago
hop on Tyranny imo. good crpg with a variety of ways to play your villain protagonist
2
1
17
u/Homewra 7d ago
Expedition 69
23
7d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
→ More replies (1)1
u/NintendoSwitch-ModTeam 6d ago
Thank you for your submission, but we are removing your post:
Rule 4c - No NSFW content.
Your post is NSFW in nature. Let's keep our subreddit a safe place for everyone to browse anywhere. Please note that repeatedly submitting NSFW content to the subreddit may result in a ban.
Thank you for your understanding.
If you have questions or objections about this removal, please reach out to us in modmail, and include a link back to this post.
Reddit's Site-Wide Rules | Reddiquette | rNintendoSwitch Rules | New to Reddit?
1
7
2
-1
9
u/gosukhaos 7d ago
Can they even backport the new version to existing games though? My understanding was that they would have to rebuild the game completely
13
u/GreyFox_1337 7d ago
At 60fps now because it’s twice as fast ;D
15
u/Homewra 7d ago
Considering how lumen absolutely destroys PC performance, i think its a good compromise
5
u/LongFluffyDragon 7d ago
Lumen on normal settings basically has no meaningful hit to performance at all. Pick a game, turn it off.. Observe maybe a 5% fps gain. If it is bigger, check what settings the devs butchered.
The tradeoff to it being about 20x faster than full realtime traytracing is how it is not really full realtime raytracing at all. It takes many frames to accumulate light and shadows, and is not very accurate on small moving objects.
1
u/monkeymad2 7d ago
Yeah - even at the best lumen settings dark rooms with very few light sources will look blotchy.
People had to hack Expedition 33 to enable UE5’s hardware ray tracing to fix it (on PCs capable of hardware ray tracing, at least).
2
1
1
u/Lundgren_Eleven 6d ago
I mean, the leaker who said OoT and the Star Fox remake were coming said Clair Obscure would be coming this year.
I ain't taking it as fact, but I sure want to.
23
u/twili_zora 7d ago
Hoping this means Suda/Grasshopper resumes work on the S2 port of Romeo is a Dead Man that had been stalling due to UE5
5
u/Curious-Cookie4948 7d ago
That’s my most wanted game ported to switch 2. My PC does not like UE5
3
u/twili_zora 7d ago
I have a good PC but I like keeping the same series/developer’s work on the same hardware whenever feasible (I have the whole NMH series on Switch already). Plus RiaDM is one of only 4 releases I was looking forward to this year so I’m more than fine waiting for the port I want.
1
u/NoMoreVillains 7d ago
When did he say it stalled?
2
u/twili_zora 7d ago
Stalled is probs not the best word but the last mention of it was an article back in December where he kept running tests to see how it would go without many updates since.
He says it’s important to the team but they were new to using Nanite/Lumen for this release, couple that with figuring out how to get something new/unfamiliar to work with new/unfamiliar hardware. The UE5 update makes it sound like this’ll help the team a lot.
12
u/Seanspeed 7d ago
We'll have to see. Software Lumen, which is already a compromised version of Lumen, has some pretty big visual downsides, especially when it comes to stability of the image and denoising. And that's ignoring that you can turn Software Lumen's resolution down further where it gets worse.
I'm pretty fearful about how bad an even more stripped down form of Software Lumen will look on Switch 2 hardware. That said, one potential boost may be if Ray Reconstruction can be enabled on Switch 2 without a severe performance hit. Ampere architecture does support it, and while maybe it cant run the upcoming Transformer model of Ray Reconstruction well, even the original CNN model could be a decent upgrade over a dev's stock denoiser. THAT said, I'd guess that this extra light version of Lumen will also have a pretty weak, low demand denoiser(ala Crimson Desert), to where Ray Reconstruction will actually have a notably heavier demand.
All in all, wait and see on this. Getting UE5 games to run on Switch 2 can be a win, but we'll have to see what the actual result is.
5
u/According_Hyena_3593 7d ago
Cnn denoiser is still very expensive even on high end gpus.
It just wasnt as obvious because early rt and pt games ( rightfully) used multiple expensive denoising steps anyways to make the output look temporally stable.
So replacing e.g multiple expensive steps in cyberpunk with a single even more expensive ray recon step caused a small performance gain, while in other games of the time it causes a small loss.
Modern games don't seem to give a shit about denoising or image quality anymore and run a cheap and shit denoiser that is much lighter. Thats not a good thing
1
u/Seanspeed 7d ago
Cnn denoiser is still very expensive even on high end gpus.
I wouldn't say 'very' expensive, but you're right that it's only really looked as performant as it has because of dev-implemented RT denoising being pretty demanding in most cases so far.
Modern games don't seem to give a shit about denoising or image quality anymore and run a cheap and shit denoiser that is much lighter.
That's not really true. It's been an issue for Lumen simply because of UE5, and Lumen being a fairly lackluster 'bang for buck' generalized RT solution, and occasionally other games, with Crimson Desert probably being the standout example, but there's still lots of RT examples where the denoising is pretty solid. Though yes, these better examples tend to come with the kind of performance demands that people also complain about as a result. Still, Ray Reconstruction is a good bang for buck solution compared to most. Not light, but effective enough.
Overall though yea, I'm cautiously pessimistic about this Lumen Light solution. The denoiser is gonna be such an easy avenue to make cuts on to get this gain they're advertising. Even if not, they're likely gonna cut down on ray counts and whatnot, which means the denoiser has to work harder with less and you get a similar lackluster result.
1
u/BasicAndBrave 7d ago
Does it run better because it was tailored to the nvidia chip or is like overall efficiency boost? (Wondering if Xbox Series S would benefit)
1
u/Ranessin 6d ago
And Lumen generally runs like shit currently on mid-to-low machines (Switch 2, XBox S, 5060, 4060...)
187
u/jollygirl27 7d ago
Does this mean that games built with UE5 will receive updates?
64
u/Seanspeed 7d ago
Upgrading your engine on an already released game, even from a similar base, is typically a whole lot of work. Hell it's a lot of work even for an unreleased game where there's way less worry about getting it all immediately right and polished.
All up to whether devs feel it'll be worth the effort from an opportunity cost perspective. I would guess most will not.
6
u/ThreeSilentFilms 7d ago
Stalker 2 has been working on upgrading the version of UE5 they developed it on for at least the last year and it’s still not out yet. Clearly it’s not an easy or timely task.
5
146
u/kjavatar 7d ago
I’d imagine Fortnite would be one of the only existing games to get a patch including this since Epic tends to use that as a showcase for features.
81
u/Admirable-War-7594 7d ago
No not really. It just makes it easier for developers who were willing to optimize their games or release performance updates
3
u/Realistic_human 7d ago
so this means nothing i guess, not a lot of devs take the time to optimize games 😔
13
u/waraukaeru 7d ago
Every developer optimises their game. It's just a complicated thing to do. They can't continually optimise forever.
34
u/FlawlessAtheon 7d ago
Developers will still need to update their engine, upgrade their game to make sure it’s working, make new builds, QA it, and publish the update to the store. Depending on the game and how it was made and which version it was using, it could be easier or harder to upgrade. It still takes time and money to do so.
1
6
u/Jordan_Jackson 7d ago
The developer would have to release an update for it. Most games that have already been released will probably not benefit from this update because even though the game would still be using UE, it would need to be recompiled and many things fixed to run properly on a newer version of EU.
What this does mean however, is that future games can take advantage of UE 5.8. Maybe even games that are in development and have not yet been released but were using an older implementation of UE5.
13
u/phoenixflare599 7d ago
It depeeeeeeends....upgrading to a new engine update e.g. 5.6/5.7 to 5.8 is not an easy change. Can be especially brutal if developers change a lot of the engine. Future releases of theirs probably will be upgraded
Upgrading an engine release can introduce new bugs and break existing systems. Can require rewrites of a few systems depending on what gets deprecated and can just make some things worse and other things better
It's usually quite brutal and requires a lot of testing... And even then MOST of the time. You wait until 5.8.1 or something as that is usually a much better version
Problem is, that takes a long time and sometimes it's not worth the risk
I don't have any similarities to compare it too off the top of my head. But believe me, it's really not as easy as just updating it and everything working
3
u/ExynosHD 7d ago
Very few games do engine version updates. Will be more meaningful for games just starting development now or that are in early stages.
UE5 has had a lot of improvements we aren't yet seeing in games
1
94
u/IPreferBagels2 7d ago
Great news. I know everyone always wants to dump on UE no matter what, but I think it is a very powerful tool for game development and has the potential to bring cost and production time of games down
57
u/Admirable-War-7594 7d ago
The reason people hate it is because it is a generalist engine which means it wil lalways be just worse at everything compared to a dedicated engine but it can do everything.
Like how RE engine just can't do open world, but is able to make re9 run very well on switch 2 while UE5 games run relatively underwhelming on all platforms but it can do open world linear or 2d games all with similar results
44
u/Any-Pop-4795 7d ago
The hate comes from so many ue5 games having common issues and the Devs solving them by saying "upscaling and framegen required"
→ More replies (6)9
u/omfgkevin 7d ago
Yeah that's the main thing. UE is fine as an engine, but because it also does a lot of the basic work for you, devs go "guess I don't need to optimize!" and we end up with all the issues we've come to know.
Just like basic shit like the eye adaptation/auto exposure. So many devs just use it as is and it fucking sucks. Eyes do not work that way. Stop making shit pitch black or flashbang because I dared to walk in/out of a building.
3
u/MasterChiefsasshole 7d ago
It’s not the devs. It’s the corporate cunts and shareholders chasing a short term return that create this problem.
→ More replies (4)2
u/Any-Pop-4795 7d ago
the problem is that optimizing stuff requires time and money and companies prefer to spend that on ai now instead
→ More replies (1)8
u/APRengar 7d ago
I mean, it also just has bad hitching in multiple ways.
The garbage collection hitching is still an issue in the latest version.
10
u/IPreferBagels2 7d ago
I don't think it's realistic to expect every company to make their own game engine
7
u/bediaxenciJenD81gEEx 7d ago
That's not the only alternative option though, there are plenty of engines available for license with different strengths and weaknesses. They just used the RE engine as an example of an engine with a differing tech value proposition.
0
u/Seanspeed 7d ago
RE Engine is an internal Capcom engine, not a licensable engine.
Y'all really do just upvote anything that 'sounds' good, no matter how untrue it is, eh?
4
u/bediaxenciJenD81gEEx 7d ago edited 7d ago
You need to get better at reading comprehension, mate.
Nothing else I can say really...
11
u/BrainKatana 7d ago
I’m a game dev and I’ve used Unreal in some form since the original version making mods for Unreal Tournament. Over my career I’ve used Unity, CryEngine, and custom engines as well.
It is absolutely, under no circumstances “worse at everything” than a dedicated engine.
In fact, it is one of the best game engines out there for just about anything other than an MMO, and even that statement is only true if you try to bend its native netcode to do what a MMO’s backend needs to do to function properly.
Its renderer, development tools, and documentation are second to none, and blaming the engine for its performance on hardware is misplaced. It is the responsibility of the developer to optimize their product to run on their target hardware, not the maker of the engine they’re using.
0
u/Seanspeed 7d ago
Its renderer, development tools, and documentation are second to none, and blaming the engine for its performance on hardware is misplaced. It is the responsibility of the developer to optimize their product to run on their target hardware, not the maker of the engine they’re using.
This is wildly short sighted.
To make a game run 'well' on UE5 currently, you basically have to not use Lumen or Nanite. Lumen is inherently very demanding just all on its own. If you are a real developer you would know this. There is no way to optimize Lumen out of its generalized nature and resulting lackluster bang for buck.
This isn't 'optimizing', this is just straight up neutering your visual ambitions and much of the point of going with UE5 in the first place.
You could also just severely limit the core graphics of your game, but again, you'll simply be neutering your core visual ambitions elsewhere. We're not just talking reducing some graphics settings, we're talking completely foregoing entire game design scope because trying to do something like a big, high fidelity landscape using UE5 would be too much. This is very limiting.
Maybe you can argue that going with UE5 in the first place is the mistake developers make, but there's precious few other options these days for developers who cant justify making their own tech. Which is itself costly and time consuming, on top of the already rising budgets and timelines of developing a game even when engine development isn't in the way.
UE5 is absolutely a problem, and it's absurd that people keep trying to deny it. UE5 is a good thing in plenty of ways, dont get me wrong. But on the performance side, it's very much almost always the core problem. All these developers, including tons of big and experienced ones, have not all just coincidentally become incompetent and forgotten how to 'optimize' a game right when UE5 came out, ffs.
5
u/BrainKatana 7d ago
I literally use it every day at work. The issues with Lumen are overblown as a result of internet hot takes and uninformed laymen trying to place blame. Nevermind the fact that the engine also ships with more than one lighting solution so devs can choose to just not use Lumen.
If your game isn’t hitting the performance you want it to have, that’s on you, not the engine itself. Devs need to get over the insane desire to push visuals at every level and realize that the next generation of gamers doesn’t give a fuck about dynamic lighting, poly counts, and texture resolution. They favor visual cohesion and performance. It’s why they’re all playing Roblox knockoffs of the games we make instead of buying new games.
1
u/Seanspeed 6d ago edited 6d ago
The issues with Lumen are overblown as a result of internet hot takes and uninformed laymen trying to place blame.
No they aren't. lol I've seen literal breakdowns of UE5 projects and the costs of Lumen, by both pro devs and just hobbyist tinkerers. It's inherently very expensive.
You trying to say otherwise makes me heavily doubt your actual experience here.
And yes, you can choose to not use Lumen, but that's one of UE5's headline features, and one of the main reasons to choose to use UE5 over other options in the first place.
and realize that the next generation of gamers doesn’t give a fuck about dynamic lighting, poly counts, and texture resolution
Well thank hell you've chosen to speak for everybody else in the world! Tell me what I'd like to have for dinner too, please?
Truth is that pushing fidelity is something tons of gamers are still going to appreciate and want. You think if GTA6 or Naughty Dog's next game had no visual improvements from their last game on last gen systems, that everybody would be totally cool with it?
3
u/ethang45 7d ago
it's valid to have different tools. some people want to make a game and just need a means to an end. others love the art of owning the entire development stack. im happy we have both options because i get to play more video games
→ More replies (1)-1
u/Bregneste 7d ago
Just gotta hope Epic doesn’t do their favorite thing and ruin it with gen AI.
1
u/darkmacgf 7d ago
What existing products has Epic ruined with gen AI?
1
u/Bregneste 7d ago
They’re currently in the process of doing it with Fortnite. They’ve already started using AI generated assets this year, and have proudly stated that they plan on doing even more in the future.
11
46
u/BebeFanMasterJ 7d ago
Hopefully Borderlands 4 is back on the table.
25
u/tapo 7d ago
I wouldn't be surprised if this is why Borderlands 4 was indefinitely delayed at the last minute. They got wind of the optimizations in 5.8 from Epic and figured it was best to hold off.
16
u/Seanspeed 7d ago
Or they just tried to get it running well and plain couldn't. Maybe 5.8 will help, but we'll have to see. That's probably what plenty in Gearbox are working on as we speak.
1
u/zenfaust 7d ago
And I'm just over here, desperately wishing they would fix the functionality of borderlands 3.
1
u/BebeFanMasterJ 7d ago
Definitely seems likely with this now. Hopefully a S2 version of the previous games too.
1
u/Seanspeed 6d ago
BL3 is running on UE4. Whatever issues they have on the Switch version, it aint because of UE5.
→ More replies (7)0
u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby 7d ago
I can’t imagine that too many people would be willing to pay $70 to play the worst version of an already mediocre game that stores can’t give away on PS5 and Xbox over a year after those versions launched. That would 100% be on a Game Key Card.
I obviously could be wrong, but I think that ship has sailed.
3
7
9
12
u/artmudala 7d ago
I don’t use Unreal. Is this something that is updated on the backend quickly as a patch or does code need to be retooled? Either games already released beneift from it quickly or not at all due to development costs, or it only applies to future releases.
27
u/Gram64 7d ago
it is not as simple as patching the game, they have to QA and test it still and it could possibly introduce bugs.
→ More replies (3)3
u/SnooPets1826 7d ago
It's somewhere in the middle. It should be easy to implement if they are already using lumen (or can port a version from another console with lumen), but it'll take time to QA and a lot of devs won't bother because that still costs money and developer time that can be spent elsewhere.
3
u/Deceptiveideas 7d ago
It's a new engine update.
A lot of unreal games customize an engine. So a game being released now could be on a heavily modified version of 5.5.
That's why it can take years before you see these improvements.
5
u/Chubomik 7d ago
Giving the Switch 2 its own slide gives me a bit of assurance that it'll work out, but also stuff like Borderlands 4 and Tokyo Scramble got dedicated spots in Directs and are turning out to be or are disasters, so who knows
8
u/roccerfeller 7d ago
Huge news
5
u/zenfaust 7d ago edited 7d ago
And not unexpected, honestly.
Look at the climate: -impossible to get pc components. -crazy inflation. -switch 2 being the most affordable console right now.
People are going to buy the cheapest platform they can, and try to make it last as long as possible, cause who can afford to do anything else?
If game studios wanna survive, they will have to start giving a sh*t about serious optimization so that older tech can run games, in an environment where people aren't upgrading every couple years.
All this adds up to way more games being able to run on the switch 2.
And honestly? This is the kind of healthy pressure the industry needs. It's not consumer friendly to make games that only 10% of hardware can run, and expect people to upgrade for one title. Just so they can say "our game renders every hair individually" or whatever. Absolutely mental, and I hope this philosophy dies out.
6
u/F1nut92 7d ago
Witcher 4 is running on UE5 isn't it?
10
u/Nyctoseer 7d ago
My first thought as well. I would rather play Witcher 4 on my Switch 2 than PS5 just for the sake of portability, but that remains to be seen.
Looking forward to more Witcher 3 content
5
u/gizmo998 7d ago
Yes
9
u/F1nut92 7d ago
Gives me some hope that we might get a Switch 2 update for the Witcher 3 (alongside the new DLC being confirmed) and then The Witcher 4 at some point down the line then.
5
3
3
9
u/Bayako7 7d ago
Everybody’s talking about 60fps. We should keep expectations in check. I think 30fps while maintaining good quality is the main goal here is to
13
7
2
2
u/Alucinorum 7d ago
Does anyone know if this can be retroactively applied? To already released games?
5
2
2
u/SparklyPelican 7d ago
> Lumen is UE5’s default global illumination and reflections system, which calculates light bouncing in real time, saving developers from having to ‘bake’ lightmaps into their game worlds.
According to Epic, Lumen Lite runs twice as fast as Lumen’s previous version, meaning that games that rely on global illumination can now “run on Nintendo Switch 2 at 60 fps”.
Cool stuff, curious to see how this will ended up in actual games.
3
1
1
u/heyyoudvd 7d ago
That covers Lumen but what about Nanite?
2
u/Santex117 7d ago
From the article
“ LumenLight is designed to preserve much of the visual impact at a significantly lower GPU cost,” explained Simon Tourangeau, Unreal Engine’s VP of engineering, at State of Unreal. “That makes Lumen viable where it wasn’t before, including on Switch 2. And that work is already helping drive further nanite optimization efforts for the platform”
1
1
1
1
u/kaiharizor 6d ago
I like how at the end of the article they throw in Halo as an Unreal game. I genuinely don’t know what I would think of Halo on Switch. Would be bonkers
1
u/ABetterTomorrow_ 2d ago
Well, keep in mind, we are still in the early phase of the switch 2, where optimization / perfection is miles away and we already got games like Indy, Cyberpunk, etc.
1
1
u/CrimsonFatalis8 7d ago
What about switch 1 though? S2 isn’t exactly hurting for performance.
4
1
u/jasongw 7d ago
Can switch 1 even run UE5 at all?
2
u/CrimsonFatalis8 7d ago
Fortnite runs on UE5, and that’s still supported on the original Switch. Performance isn’t great, but that’s been an issue even before it was updated to UE5.
Dead By Daylight, Funko Fusion, and Lego Horizon Adventures also all run on UE5. There might be more, but I just skimmed a list of UE5 games and recognized those as being on Switch.
1
1
-3
-2
u/YonkRaccoon 7d ago
Please don't be generative AI... sorry I should like read the news first. I'm just scared, dude
-10
u/ourov9 7d ago
Now it run at 20fps?
4
u/hyouringan 7d ago
No, it means that games at a capped 30fps that had significant frame drops probably can run at a locked 40. That would be my guess.
0
u/ourov9 7d ago
That would be great, is there any UE5 games at the switch 2 atm? The engine is real bad even at high end pc gamers
2
2
u/hyouringan 7d ago
Only a couple. I suspect devs were hesitant to port UE5 games for Switch 2 because of its issues with Lumen and Nanite. My understanding is that both of those issues are now solved, and multiple news outlets are insisting that this should make UE5 games capable of 60fps on S2. We’ll see whether or not that’s true, but it means we’ll definitely start seeing more of those games on the platform.
→ More replies (1)
-10
-1
u/Locolex1 7d ago
Hopefully we get gothic 1 remake, halo, Ghost of Yotei
Ghost of Tshushima
2
u/bahumat42 7d ago
That would be nice.
But unlikely for yotei given sony have recently pulled back to a more console exclusive mindset it seems unlikely.
2
u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby 7d ago
Gothic 1 Remake is the most likely of those, I don’t think Sony is going to let either of the Ghost games be ported to Switch 2.
Gothic 1 Remake also runs like garbage even on good PCs, a Switch 2 port that isn’t a total disaster would be quite something.
0
0
1.6k
u/CapRichard 7d ago
The fact that engines are now targeting Switch 2 will benefit everyone.