Fortnite: Chapter 4 jumps to Unreal Engine 5.1

The fourth chapter of Fortnite has been here since yesterday, Sunday – and that not only brings new content, but also a major technical leap for the game. Epic Games is switching to the modern Unreal Engine 5.1.

With Chapter 4, Epic Games brings another revised map, new characters such as Geralt von Rivia from the Witcher series and new guns in Fortnite. In addition, the technology has also been significantly improved, because far away from the actual gameplay, Fortnite now shines in new visual splendor thanks to the use of the modern Unreal Engine 5.1.

Thanks to the new engine, current features such as Nanite, Lumen, Virtual Shadow Maps and Temporal Super Resolution are now possible in Fortnite. PC gamers can experience the high-quality graphics immediately, provided they have the appropriate computer. If you prefer the old rendering technique, you can make all sorts of new adjustments in the settings in the “Video and Display” menu and store them there.

The Nanite technology should help to better render geometric objects such as buildings, stones, grass or trees. These are now modeled individually, in the case of buildings, for example, each individual stone. At the same time, the number of polygons when rendering objects has increased noticeably.

Lumen brings improvements in reflections and is said to enable more realistic ray tracing effects on water or shiny surfaces. Overall, this optimizes lighting and reflections within buildings.

The Virtual Shadow Maps technology generally improves the shadows in the game. Everything modeled in Fortnite now casts shadows, including character outfits such as hats. Finally, Temporal Super Resolution is an upgrade over previous Temporal Anti-Aliasing. If you have a powerful computer, you can look forward to high-quality renders at higher frame rates.

If you want to benefit from the new technologies on PS5 or Xbox Series X/S, you should deactivate the 120 FPS mode in the graphics menu; the frame rate is lower on consoles, but you get the highest possible graphics quality.