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[Wildebeest]

Unreal Engine 5 gets a lot of publicity, but it was playing catchup to Unity in terms of features developers need to rapidly develop games. You still need to work with a lot of grizzly C++ to get the most out of it.

 

[LazyParrot]

Almost every game using UE4, released in the past few years, has major performance issues. From the biggest AAA, to simple indie games.
It's not normal for a game engine to be this bad. And although devs might have some blame, the reality is that the issue is the game engine itself.

Are you trusting your gut here or do you have actual numbers and dev statements to back this up?

 

[winjer]

Are you trusting your gut here or do you have actual numbers and dev statements to back this up?

Are you trying to pretend that most recent UE4 games don't have performance issues?
Seriously?

 

[LazyParrot]

Are you trying to pretend that most recent UE4 games don't have performance issues?
Seriously?

Guess that's a no.

 

[winjer]

Guess that's a no.

All you have to do is look at threads on this forum, about UE4 games, and you will find plenty of reports about performance issues.
Or you can look at Digital Foundry or other tech channels.
The amount of games with issues is enormous.

 

[StereoVsn]

I agree that it takes alot of money to support and develop a cutting edge engine.

If we were looking at what company could make one to compete with UE, one would without a doubt could be Microsoft.

Software is what they are good at. Supporting software is also what they do day in day out.
They already have some cutting edge engines in idtech, Forzatech and most likely IW7 in their stable.

Epic might have that Fortnite money, but MS has 100 times what Epic has.
It just seems to fit right in with what MS is all about. Why would you think MS should be in the API buisness? There they are. I'm also pretty sure that there is no money from DX and it just costs them money to put it out.
They have the API, they have the game engines, they make video games, have their fingers in all the pies, so why not this one?

I know there is a massive hate boner on here for MS, but if people put that to the side, it is surprising that they arnt all ready doing it.

It's not worth the effort for MS. They can make many times games engine money by bumping up price for Office 365 subs, lol.

The only reason I could see MS getting into this if they pushed their Azure services alongside it. So "use our engine, you get cloud gaming including offloading calculations, hosting, MP, etc...".

 

[StereoVsn]

All you have to do is look at threads on this forum, about UE4 games, and you will find plenty of reports about performance issues.
Or you can look at Digital Foundry or other tech channels.
The amount of games with issues is enormous.

Part of the issue here is that on PC side a lot of devs just don't bother with optimizations specific to the platform, like pre-caching shaders.

 

[winjer]

Part of the issue here is that on PC side a lot of devs just don't bother with optimizations specific to the platform, like pre-caching shaders.

That is part of the issue.
But consider that even Fortnite, Epic's cash cow, when it used UE4, was plagued with performance issues.

The only game that is free from stutters, is Gears 5. But that one was extensively modified by The Coalition.

 

[LazyParrot]

All you have to do is look at threads on this forum, about UE4 games, and you will find plenty of reports about performance issues.
Or you can look at Digital Foundry or other tech channels.
The amount of games with issues is enormous.

That'll tell me exactly one thing: that there are UE games with performance issues. Needless to say that's something I'm aware of and have never denied.

It won't tell me anything about the other claims you've made, namely that UE games in general are significantly more likely to suffer from performance issues than other games, and that the blame can be squarely placed on the engine itself rather than other factors, such as changing development conditions and a general shift in the industry towards a "ship it now, fix it later" mindset.

 

[Razvedka]

Unity can do amazing things. But almost no one is using it to make AAA graphics in games.
UE4 became a standard but it has so many performance problems, it's a wonder why so many studios choose to use it.
We can only hope that UE5 won't become the same mess that UE4 is now.

If you play Silica on PC with max graphics it can be truly breathtaking. One of the most beautiful games I've played, and it uses Unity.

But be warned, it's still in alpha.

For me the beauty comes out at dawn, dusk, and the night fights. It look greats during the day two but the other parts of the dynamic night cycle really shine. There are moments where it almost looks real to me.

 

[winjer]

That'll tell me exactly one thing: that there are UE games with performance issues. Needless to say that's something I'm aware of and have never denied.

It won't tell me anything about the other claims you've made, namely that UE games in general are significantly more likely to suffer from performance issues than other games, and that the blame can be squarely placed on the engine itself rather than other factors, such as changing development conditions and a general shift in the industry towards a "ship it now, fix it later" mindset.

Seriously, when not even Epic can make it work without stutters, do you really think this is not an issue with the game.
Are you going to tell me all devs in the world are incompetent, except The Coalition.

 

[Shadowplay1979]

Because Unreal is the best engine ive ever used. Unity sucked balls. The material setup is garbage, the shaders are trash. Keep in mind this is an artist perspective......but yea theres pretty much nothing you cant do in Unreal. Also no mid sized or larger studio pops open unreal and just makes a game...they take unreal and then build a personalized version of the engine.

 

[Dane]

Because Epic has a massive staff to support the engine, in fact, they have been the biggest at the industry since Unreal Engine 2, while outsourcing the console version at the time to Secret Level. The sheer amount of mods, documentations, tutorials, support from the engine over the generations outshines the competition by light years, only Unity come close to that.

Previously they had close competition from idTech and GoldSrc/Source Engine, with the former, id Software according to Carmack never liked much the idea of licensing because it took part of their own dev time to support the engines to external developers, hence they were bought by Zenimax. With the latter, Valve had great support with mods but hardly got traction with mainstream developers after 06, only a few indie studios supported it over the years but moved on to Unreal and Unity in the following games.

Studios would need to make their own dedicated support teams for licensing and supporting the enigne, its not something they might see as financially worth, and we don't even know how their editors work, Unreal and Unity ones have plenty of features out of the box so that non-programmers can easily implement assets and gameplay features with visual scripting, then pass it to programmers as a visual example so they can polish as a C++ code.

 

[ProgenitorCastle]

I usually prefer engines that enable great action gameplay, like Capcom's MT Framework as an example. But now I'm realizing that each game has it's own take on things, the engine is customized per game so the things specific to a game's feeling doesn't count on the engine/tech side entirely but the creative decisions of the team or person making the game. That's what makes gaming amazing...all these various genres, all these variations on how a gamer can interact...it's brilliant really :]

 

[CartesianMan]

CryEngine at some point was supperior, but this in the past.
Now is very expensive to develop and mentain Game Engine, Epic Games and Unreal are the best and consistent.
Unity is popular even more popular compere to Unreal, so you have the answer - Unreal is not the most popular engine.

 

[AeonGaidenRaiden]

I also found it interesting that BlackBird have decided to move from Unity to Unreal Engine for Homeworld 3 (one of my most anticipated games)

One franchise im gutted it never got ported to MAC OS.

 

[Hudo]

One franchise im gutted it never got ported to MAC OS.

Maybe when Apple releases their Proton fork, you might be able to play it afterall! But yeah, it's sad that more games don't get ported to Mac!

 

[DeepEnigma]

Unity can do amazing things. But almost no one is using it to make AAA graphics in games.
UE4 became a standard but it has so many performance problems, it's a wonder why so many studios choose to use it.
We can only hope that UE5 won't become the same mess that UE4 is now.

I'm just spit balling here, but it may have to do with access to documentation & support in contrast to each other.

 

[Ainem Enamas]

I think that the engine should simply support the artist's vision for artistic measurements so to speak.

 

[winjer]

I'm just spit balling here, but it may have to do with access to documentation & support in contrast to each other.

Unreal Engine has great documentation. And tons of tutorials online, both in video and written.
It also has a forum where people share tips and tricks. Even the UE devs participate and try to help.
And it has a lot of open source code.

It's not like devs are going blind into this game engine and screwing up.
The engine really has many technical issues.

 

[DeepEnigma]

Unreal Engine has great documentation. And tons of tutorials online, both in video and written.
It also has a forum where people share tips and tricks. Even the UE devs participate and try to help.
And it has a lot of open source code.

It's not like devs are going blind into this game engine and screwing up.
The engine really has many technical issues.

Unity has it's issues as well. There have been a ton of Unity games that chop, skip, memory leak, etc.. Especially early on in it's use last gen.

But documentation and support are key for big studios. Unity's open source freeware has been good for Indies.

 

[Damigos]

Something tells me that you have no idea wtf you are talking about.

Something tells me you didnt understand my analogy

 

[a multicultural team of v]

Because gen z don't want to learn anything other than Unreal Engine and Unity.

ok but what if *takes bong hit* you use unreal engine to create unity 2, and use unity to create unreal engine 2????

 

[64bitmodels]

Because gen z don't want to learn anything other than Unreal Engine and Unity.

The oldest Gen Z member is 27, and most of us are younger than that. we are not making video games.

 

[kiphalfton]

Cost

 

[lostinblue]

Because John Carmack is making rockets and playing with VR instead.

You're behind the times, now he's doing AI.

actually he moved on to neural networks and AI.

you beat me to it

 

[Kataploom]

There's a reason why UE has a market even among the best of the best of the industry: Making a game engine is HARD, even a small one, it's not like making a web app or so...

 

[lostinblue]

John Carmack is so glorified here. He was revolutionary in the 90s and early 2000, but havent done anything for a game engine in 15 years or so. People should let it go already. His VR stint wasnt the best either.

I don't glorify the guy, but you can have a good understanding of what makes him move at this point. Things evolved and engines these days are not defined by just one guy, like chips, and products in general. He made a difference until quite later on, but I don't think he was ever interested in dominating the engine market (if he tried the things he focused on would have been different), instead carmack was always focused on doing clever things "you're not supposed to" in order to differentiate his engine from the others, also he wass looking to hack things up, basically. When his tech is already doing those things, or they're supported by hardware he kinda loses interest. So if he continued working on iD Tech engine itinerations you'd have him focusing on wacky things. Actually why he went for VR, he was revisiting his old tech in order to focus on it for Doom 3 BFG back in 2012, releasing a product was a byproduct.

That both creates stuff like the original Doom, being 3D in 1993 with PC's not powerful enough to run it unless a lot of clever tricks were used; and also creates stuff like Megatexture which is a bit like "they told me I couldn't do this so I did it anyway". It works, but it'll never be industry standard until hardware evolve a lot. He'll never look at a spec sheet and follow it which is also why very limited hardware was much more interesting for him.

I'm not sure nanite and all the unreal engine stuff they've been showing for the last few years but haven't used in commercial games aren't a bit like something Carmack would do though. And the reason we are not surrounded by games using it the same as Carmack's "failings".

 

[LazyParrot]

Seriously, when not even Epic can make it work without stutters, do you really think this is not an issue with the game.
Are you going to tell me all devs in the world are incompetent, except The Coalition.

Studios fuck up with their own engines all the time. Naughty Dog being involved in the PC port of TLOU didn't stop that game from releasing with horrible shader stutter - the exact same problem plaguing many UE 4 games. Ditto for CDPR and the next gen patch for The Witcher 3, From Software and Elden Ring, or EA and the Dead Space remake.

At the same time, UE games that don't suffer from these problems are out there, and they're not all made by The Coalition. Hi-Fi Rush and Dead Island 2 are two recent examples.

 

[Kataploom]

Idtech was only a competitor during idtech 3. All their other engines never quite matched the versatility of idtech 3.

Imagine if MS makes Id Tech as a general open source engine. That would be amazing.

 

[Ballthyrm]

It's also fairly obvious why studios keep choosing it over other engines. It's been around for 25 years at this point, so there is a huge pool of potential hires that have years or even decades worth of experience with it. The support and documentation are also solid, easily accessible, frequently updated and available in multiple languages (this is the main reason why so many Japanese studios switched from proprietary Engines to UE - they had everything translated into Japanese very early on).

Yeah I think OP doesn't understand it is not necessarily about just the engine.
The tools is where the battle is being fought, you get a ton of users used to your tools and it's game over.
The ability to iterate, get tons of support, get a specialised tool for every part of your game.

It's is like asking can you build a car in your home garage, sure you can.
But a pro garage where you have all the tools at Hand is way easier and faster and cheaper in the long run.

The Engine itself is another matter entirely and worthy of discussion on its own, but I don't think that why devs are switching to Unity of Unreal.
It is really about the ecosystem before any of the other requirement like pure performance or graphics.

PS: also Unreal engine has been in continuous development for 30+ years with some if not the best Engineer on the planet working on it, good luck catching up if you don't have a Billion Dollar.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Almost every game using UE4, released in the past few years, has major performance issues. From the biggest AAA, to simple indie games.
It's not normal for a game engine to be this bad. And although devs might have some blame, the reality is that the issue is the game engine itself.

If Unreal is so bad why is everyone using it?

 

[The Pleasure]

Imagine if MS makes Id Tech as a general open source engine. That would be amazing.

Without diety and Super AI, John Carmack making it, it would just be another meh engine.

 

[winjer]

If Unreal is so bad why is everyone using it?

Interface and tools that are way ahead of most engines.
Also, UE has been of of the most used third party engines for 2 decades. So a lot of devs have experience with it.

 

[Loomy]

They have the resources, they have the tech and they have the money to push it against Unreal.

Microsoft has been inept and incompetent in gaming software for the last 10 or so years. Which is why they're using their money/resources to buy instead of build.

 

[Tams]

Something tells me you didnt understand my analogy

Lol, wot?

If there ever was an analogy there, it was lost in the garbled nonsense you typed out.

 

[DerivedDataCache]

Microsoft has been inept and incompetent in gaming software for the last 10 or so years. Which is why they're using their money/resources to buy instead of build.

True. Microsoft would rather buy Epic instead of make their own game engine.
But I don't see that ever happening. A Unity or Epic purchase by a platform holder is extremely anti-competitive and will get blocked.

 

[Kataploom]

Unity is the most popular engine on the market......devs just arent using HDRP so people assume the engine cant do amazing things.
The Enemies benchmark is still the most impressive thing you can run on your PC and even has RTX 4090s begging for mercy at native 4K.


CryTek had that weird period where they were in the shitter, and their support and documentation isnt at the same level as Unity and Unreal, they are improving but I think it might be too late to really claw back any developers.
Unigine just doesnt seem to have any game devs using it, but its used extensively(atleast it used to be) for other realtime applications such as archviz and military simulations

Making and maintaining your own engine is hard work, Sony has the ICE team who help with basically all the engines.
ATG from Microsoft also help with maintaining and upgrading their inhouse engines.
id and idtech are anomalous considering they are a relatively small team, but clearly talented beyond measure so they have an engine thats super performant.....im hoping under Microsoft more teams will be able to use it.


Indeed it does, Unreal Engine has alot of features that help in that aspect, but its far from perfect, Unity is much easier to use/learn.
The Crystal Dynamics team recently moved to Unreal Engine 5(sad face) and they said there were features they loved from the Foundation Engine that Unreal doesnt quite match.....but when you are the size of Epic, alot of features can be implemented much faster than if Crystal Dynamics tried to replicate Nanite in their own engine.

One of the complaints that Crystal Dynamics (and me) had of Unreal Engine was that the material system isnt quite up to snuff compared to offline or even CryEngine........they have since implemented a completely new material system and they will eventually sunset the old material system.

Didn't know it was already up. For those wanting to burn some GPUs, here it is: https://unity.com/demos/enemies

 

[diffusionx]

You have to be willing to make a massive investment in your engine, and this goes beyond just writing the engine but providing support, communication, sales team, etc. Epic's been doing this since the late 1990s. Other companies have struggled with this both externally (id) and internally (EA Frostbite). And over time this just becomes self-perpetuating as you deal with clients, add things they ask for, which makes it more attractive for other devs, and as more devs use your product, their existence becomes an advertisement for your own engine. If everyone in the labor market has Unreal engine experience, you have to seriously consider if it's better to switch and hire them then train them on your own engine (apparently this is a reason why CDPR switched).

Nothing is forever, and I find UE5's slow rollout to be baffling, but it's not like anyone else has stepped up. Epic's spot is pretty secure for a while.

 

[In Cold Blood]

Microsoft has been inept and incompetent in gaming software for the last 10 or so years. Which is why they're using their money/resources to buy instead of build.

Sure, tell that to yourself. It might make you feel a little better, but it won't change the reality of what MS is creating.

 

[In Cold Blood]

Yeah I think OP doesn't understand it is not necessarily about just the engine.
The tools is where the battle is being fought, you get a ton of users used to your tools and it's game over.
The ability to iterate, get tons of support, get a specialised tool for every part of your game.

It's is like asking can you build a car in your home garage, sure you can.
But a pro garage where you have all the tools at Hand is way easier and faster and cheaper in the long run.

The Engine itself is another matter entirely and worthy of discussion on its own, but I don't think that why devs are switching to Unity of Unreal.
It is really about the ecosystem before any of the other requirement like pure performance or graphics.

PS: also Unreal engine has been in continuous development for 30+ years with some if not the best Engineer on the planet working on it, good luck catching up if you don't have a Billion Dollar.

Oh, I get that it's not just the engine, but the tools and support for the studios that are using it.
That's why I'm thinking MS could be one company that could offer an engine to other devs. They have the resources to create the tools and support the devs using the engine.
I have no idea if they would do it, but I think the industry needs another good option other than UE. It's not the best engine, it sucks on PC, and is horribly optimised.
It is however, the only show in town.

 

[Damigos]

Lol, wot?

If there ever was an analogy there, it was lost in the garbled nonsense you typed out.

It is not mistake you cant understand an analogy. In any case, if you cant understand what i wrote you can just ignore it. Or ask for explanation. Or google it.

 

[Kakax11]

Unity can do amazing things. But almost no one is using it to make AAA graphics in games.
UE4 became a standard but it has so many performance problems, it's a wonder why so many studios choose to use it.
We can only hope that UE5 won't become the same mess that UE4 is now.

Unity is the king of mobile gaming while UE4 rules consoles/PC mostly so it's a tie kinda

 

[dummydecoy]

Whatever happened to the Jupiter/Lithtech engine from Monolith

 

[lyan]

Oh, I get that it's not just the engine, but the tools and support for the studios that are using it.
That's why I'm thinking MS could be one company that could offer an engine to other devs. They have the resources to create the tools and support the devs using the engine.
I have no idea if they would do it, but I think the industry needs another good option other than UE. It's not the best engine, it sucks on PC, and is horribly optimised.
It is however, the only show in town.

No one will use it because either this MS engine cannot deploy to Sony/Nintendo platforms, or it just ends up as a bad product with little internal support because it can deploy to Sony/Nintendo platforms.

 

[Freelance Yakuza]

Because making an user friendly general purpose engine is super hard,
and some of the stuff that UE5 is doing is so advanced that "catching up" is borderline impossible.

Who's actually gonna invest the amount of time and money required? It'd make more sense investing the effort into making a game instead.
Do you think doing QA for a game is hard? Try doing it for an engine. that's an even deeper level of hell.

This makes sense
QA for a game: hard
QA for any possible game:

 

[lyan]

If Unreal is so bad why is everyone using it?

It may perform bad but it gets games done, without countless man-days of nuking the library folder and reimporting assets.

 

[In Cold Blood]

No one will use it because either this MS engine cannot deploy to Sony/Nintendo platforms, or it just ends up as a bad product with little internal support because it can deploy to Sony/Nintendo platforms.

If Microsoft was to make a third party engine, those guys would make it playable on every different platform.
MLB The Show uses a proprietary Sony Engine and plays just fine on Xbox, so it's not a big deal.

 

[The Alien]

Because making an user friendly general purpose engine is super hard,
and some of the stuff that UE5 is doing is so advanced that "catching up" is borderline impossible.

Who's actually gonna invest the amount of time and money required? It'd make more sense investing the effort into making a game instead.
Do you think doing QA for a game is hard? Try doing it for an engine. that's an even deeper level of hell.

Pretty much all of this.

High inve$tment + low chance of success = few engines being made that could compete.

 

[lyan]

If Microsoft was to make a third party engine, those guys would make it playable on every different platform.
MLB The Show uses a proprietary Sony Engine and plays just fine on Xbox, so it's not a big deal.

That's because it is proprietary and the product is a game not an engine for the public.