profile

Tom Looman

New Article: Unreal Engine 5.8 Performance Highlights

Published about 11 hours ago • 1 min read

New Article: Unreal Engine 5.8 Performance Highlights​

It is possibly the last Performance Highlights overview for Unreal Engine 5. The release of UE 5.8 marks the final release before Epic Games is moving development efforts to Unreal Engine 6. That brings the focus of 5.8 to stabilize and optimize existing features (Although plenty of experimental features were added).

A couple of major performance oriented improvements include MegaLights becoming production-ready and Lumen receiving a new Lite-mode for better scalability across devices.

Some other optimization trends you see include overall image quality and stability (Lumen, VSM, MegaLights), and reduced shader permutations across a variety of render passes (Volumetric fog, VSM, Substrate, MegaLights, Lumen, etc.). These are mostly automatic wins for your project, sometimes with new CVARs to control behavior or exclusions. There are many other smaller yet valuable improvements buried deep in the full release notes...

I have included my own insights, remarks and clarify the changes where necessary.

Teaser: Epic Games Optimization Livestream

I will be live with Epic Games next week (13th of August) talking about optimization for Far Far West! More on this soon...!

600 1st Ave, Ste 330 PMB 92768, Seattle, WA 98104-2246
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​

Tom Looman

UE5 C++ Developer, Game Optimization Enthusiast & Educator

Learn the Unreal Engine techniques used by AAA studios and experienced indie developers. Join 5,000+ developers receiving my latest articles, optimization tips, and course updates.

Read more from Tom Looman

New lessons for the C++ and Optimization Courses, plus looking for reviewers! I've added 8 new lessons across the UE5 C++ and Optimization courses, including new Nanite case studies and a new enemy spawn system section. The C++ course is also getting close to its V2.0 release. 3 New Optimization lessons! The 'Complete Game Optimization for Unreal Engine 5' Course has 3 new lessons in the Case Study section: Nanite - Optimizing Overdraw (VisBuffer) Nanite - Auditing Shading Bins (Empty Draws)...

about 1 month ago • 2 min read

New Course Lessons, C++ State Trees Code Samples and More Progress continues to be steady on the courses, including continued work on the open-source Project "Orion" which feeds back into the courses and tutorials with advanced topics on C++ and Performance. 13 New lessons for 'Professional Game Development in C++ and Unreal Engine 5' Since the last newsletter I have added 13 new lessons including some performance profiling, a new buff system, GameplayTag hierarchies and the latest Assignment...

2 months ago • 1 min read
video preview

GPU Profiling & Optimization in Far Far West! The Co-op Cowboy Shooter "Far Far West" released into Early Access and I was able to record 1-hour of profiling and GPU optimizations on the project! New Video on GPU Profiling Nanite Masked Foliage, Decals and more... In my new 1-hour long video we tackle a variety of performance issues found through Unreal Insights. The list of used CVARs and other tools are available in the companion article. The goal is to add several more Case Study lesson to...

3 months ago • 1 min read