Epic is keeping game sizes in mind with Unreal Engine 5's Nanite tech
With the push to bring film-quality assets to games with Unreal Engine 5, some worry game sizes are about to balloon.
One of the most impressive features debuting with Epic Games' Unreal Engine 5 is Nanite, which enables developers to bring incredibly high-quality assets into games and not worry about polygon budgets or LODs.
The footage showed off assets so detailed they're designed for film CG, all running in real-time in the demo without a major hit to performance. But with all that increase in detail, one has to wonder if that also means game assets will be massive in size because of it.
Graham Wihlidal, senior rendering engineer on the Unreal Engine team, responded to that very question on Twitter. Though Wihlidal didn't go into specifics, he did confirm that Epic is very much aware of that concern, noting that the tech is designed to create games not static demos.
This obviously doesn't answer all our questions, but it's at least comforting to know that Epic has taken this into consideration when building Nanite. It's also worth keeping in mind that not every Unreal Engine 5 game will make use of that tech.
Epic boss Tim Sweeney has been very enthusiastic about Unreal Engine 5 and Epic's partnership with Sony, praising the PS5's SSD speeds and hoping these advancements will push tech forward on PC as well.