Unreal Engine 5 Is Now Live Alongside Lyra, A New Playable Shooter Demo

Epic Games has officially released Unreal Engine 5, the game development engine it first unveiled in 2020. This is the same engine used for last year’s surprise Matrix demo, The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience. 

Now, it’s out and available for anyone and everyone to download and use. Plus, to get people started on their Unreal Engine 5 journey, both in development and those who want to mess with it more casually, Epic Games has released Lyra, a new playable shooter demo. You can, of course, simply play Lyra – it looks like Splitgate mixed with Fortnite shooting mechanics –  but what makes this demo unique is that it can be completely customized on the development side. This gives users the chance to tinker with lighting, platform locations, and more. 

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Epic Games also released City Sample, another Unreal Engine 5 demo, but unlike Lyra, this one isn’t playable. It’s the same city from The Matrix Awakens experience, but in this, you’ll be able to freely view the city, its buildings, its vehicles and pedestrians, and more. 

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Of course, this is just the start of Unreal Engine 5. Like Epic Games’ development on Unreal Engine 4, the company will continue to iterate on Unreal Engine 5 to implement new features, updates, tools, and more. There are developers out there already using this new engine, including Epic Games itself – Chapter 3, Season 2 of Fortnite, which is what players are playing today, runs on Unreal Engine 5. 

For more Unreal Engine 5 information, you can watch the entire State of Unreal 2022 presentation here.

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