Get ready for Chapter 4 of Fortnite Battle Royale! With the release of this new chapter, Fortnite Battle Royale now utilizes the cutting-edge features of Unreal Engine 5.1.
Unreal Engine 5 represents a generational leap in visual fidelity, bringing unprecedented levels of detail to in-game worlds, such as the Battle Royale island. The new generation of Unreal Engine 5 includes Nanite, Lumen, virtual shadow maps, and temporal super-resolution, all now available in Fortnite Battle Royale for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and cloud gaming.
Nanite, Lumen, Virtual Shadow Maps, and Temporal Super-Resolution: All the Details How do these UE5 features affect Fortnite Battle Royale exactly? You can read all the technical explanations below or skip directly to the images.
Nanite Nanite allows for incredibly detailed geometric architecture. Specifically, buildings are rendered from millions of polygons in real-time, and every brick, stone, wooden plank, and wall cladding is molded.
Natural landscapes are also packed with intricate details. Each individual tree is composed of approximately 300,000 polygons, and every rock, flower, and blade of grass is modeled.
Lumen Lumen enables high-quality ray-traced reflections on shiny materials and water surfaces.
In addition, Lumen allows for real-time global illumination at 60 FPS. You’ll be able to see stunning indoor spaces where light bounces, and characters will react to the environment’s lighting. For example, red carpets will cast a reddish light on your outfit. Similarly, outfits that emit light (like glowing ones) will scatter it on nearby objects and surfaces.
Virtual Shadow Maps Virtual shadow maps enable highly detailed shadows. Each brick, leaf, and modeled detail will cast its own shadow, and character shadows will be incredibly precise. This means that other character elements, like hats or smaller details, will also have their own shadows.
Temporal Super-Resolution (TSR) Temporal super-resolution is an improvement over Fortnite’s temporal anti-aliasing and allows for high-quality graphics even at high frame rates.
Video Settings Changes on PCs With the implementation of UE5 features in Fortnite Battle Royale, the video settings have changed on PCs:
- Visualization section of the video settings
- Graphics section of the video settings
- Graphics quality section of the video settings
Nanite, Lumen, Virtual Shadow Maps, and Temporal Super-Resolution: FAQs
Compatibility with Older Operating Systems Starting with Chapter 4 – Season 2 of Battle Royale, players will need to use Windows 10 or a later operating system to continue playing Fortnite on PC. Windows 7 and 8 will no longer be officially compatible with Fortnite.
As Fortnite evolves, we are forced to implement compatibility changes so that our technology can continue to advance, and the game can meet the expectations we have set for the future. Older operating systems not only pose greater security risks but also cannot run these more modern features, leading us to spend a significant amount of time finding ways to avoid problems instead of focusing on game development.
For those who cannot access better hardware, NVIDIA GeForce NOW offers an interesting alternative for continuing to play Fortnite officially on Windows 7 and Windows 8 PCs.
What are the minimum specifications to run Nanite on a computer? GPU:
NVIDIA: Maxwell generation graphics cards or later
AMD: GCN generation graphics cards or later
Have updated graphics drivers
Operating system:
Windows 10, version 1909.1350 or later, compatible with DirectX 12 Agility SDK
Windows 11
DirectX version:
DirectX 12
What are the recommended specifications to run Nanite on a computer? GPU:
NVIDIA: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 or later
AMD: Radeon RX 5700 or later
Have updated graphics drivers
Operating system:
Latest Windows 10 update, compatible with DirectX 12 Agility SDK
Latest Windows 11 update
DirectX version:
DirectX 12
