Along with various features, the full release of the UE5 update introduces a surprise new “Lite” version of its Lumen lighting system, Epic revealed, which it says will lead to significant performance increases in Nintendo Switch 2 games.
Lumen is UE5’s default global illumination and reflections system, which calculates light bouncing in real time, saving developers from having to ‘bake’ lightmaps into their game worlds.
According to Epic, Lumen Lite runs twice as fast as Lumen’s previous version, meaning that games that rely on global illumination can now “run on Nintendo Switch 2 at 60 fps”.
“LumenLight is designed to preserve much of the visual impact at a significantly lower GPU cost,” explained Simon Tourangeau, Unreal Engine’s VP of engineering, at State of Unreal.
“That makes Lumen viable where it wasn’t before, including on Switch 2. And that work is already helping drive further nanite optimization efforts for the platform.”
Lumen is UE5’s default global illumination and reflections system, which calculates light bouncing in real time, saving developers from having to ‘bake’ lightmaps into their game worlds.
According to Epic, Lumen Lite runs twice as fast as Lumen’s previous version, meaning that games that rely on global illumination can now “run on Nintendo Switch 2 at 60 fps”.
“LumenLight is designed to preserve much of the visual impact at a significantly lower GPU cost,” explained Simon Tourangeau, Unreal Engine’s VP of engineering, at State of Unreal.
“That makes Lumen viable where it wasn’t before, including on Switch 2. And that work is already helping drive further nanite optimization efforts for the platform.”
