MegaLights in Unreal Engine 5.5 allows developers to use "orders-of-magnitude more" light sources, even on older hardware

It's a revolution that is slowly becoming the norm in triple-A games. If a rogue patch removes the lighting technology, you'll feel it. Lighting artists can rejoice because Unreal Engine 5 is bringing forth what could be a next-generation leap in the industry.

MegaLights, a new experimental feature for Unreal Engine 5, was revealed at Unreal Fest in Seattle this week. It allows developers to experiment with "orders-of-magnitude more" shadow casting lights than ever before, without compromising performance.

Wyeth Johnson led the presentation. He emphasized that Unreal Engine was at its best when the users could express themselves without any technical constraints. MegaLights is a new category of lighting that removes limitations in a completely different way than Lumen or Nanite.

What does it mean? Epic's snazzy, live demonstration takes you through a marketplace scene with 1000 light sources.

MegaLights' ability to handle shadows is the most important aspect of painting with light from a game developer perspective. At first glance, the market scene appears shiny, but when realistic shadows for each light source are enabled, the scene takes on a dramatic depth. MegaLights is not only realistic, but also dynamic and movable. This was demonstrated in the demo by a swarming of drones.

What about the rest of us? What about optimization? Epic showed its confidence by running the MegaLights demo natively on the PlayStation 5 console. Senior technical product manager Victor Brodin was seen waggling the DualSense controller sticks. MegaLights is being sold as a game that can run smoothly on a PlayStation 5 base unit.

Del Walker, a senior artist who worked on Star Wars Jedi Survivor and Suicide Squad : Kill the Justice League took to X in order to put the situation into perspective. "People don't realize just how beautiful many games are in development until they have to reduce lighting to run them on consoles." He said. This is going to next-gen all your next-gen titles.

Unreal Engine 5.5 is a game-changing engine for those who want to make the most out of their older hardware. But until I can get my grubby hands on a real game that uses the technology, I'll just be waiting in the shadows.