Learn how to prepare for future versions of Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) and make the most of new and updated features.

Rendering #

Changed defaults may affect your project's appearance:

• Screen Space Global Illumination: The project setting for Screen Space Global Illumination (Beta) and the console variable  r.SSGI.Enable have been removed. To restore Screen Space Global Illumination as the project default, open Project Settings > (Engine) Rendering > Global Illumination Project Settings > (Engine) Rendering > Global Illumination properties and set Dynamic Global Illumination Method to Screen Space (Beta) . To enable it on a Post Process Volume, find  Global Illumination in its properties, then set Method  to Screen Space (Beta) .

• Ray Tracing and Lumen Hardware Ray Tracing:Standalone ray-tracing features are being deprecated in UE5 Early Access, but Lumen preserves the engine's ability to calculate these lighting effects. UE4's standalone features largely worked in isolation and did not guarantee consistent engine-feature support. Lumen adds new reflection and global-illumination implementations to hardware ray tracing. As UE5 develops, these will improve with broader support and greater feature parity.

  • In Early Access, ray-traced reflections, global illumination, and shadows can be enabled independently. Find them in Project Settings > Rendering  Project Settings > Rendering  and enable Support Hardware Ray Tracing Support Hardware Ray Tracing to use them.

    • Under Global Illumination, choose your preferred Dynamic Global Illumination Method option.

    • Under Reflections, choose your preferred Reflection Method option.

    • Under Hardware Ray Tracing, enable Ray Tracing Shadows .

  • A Post Process Volume can also select reflection and global-illumination methods.

• Generate Mesh Distance Fields: Lumen's software ray tracing relies heavily on signed distance fields to represent meshes. The default voxel density for all distance fields increased from 0.1 to 0.2. This improves Lumen software-tracing quality but substantially increases distance-field memory use. Open Project Settings> (Engine) Rendering to find Generate Mesh Distance Fields and Distance Field Voxel Density . Restarting the editor may be required for changes to take effect.

Removals #

Nanite eliminates most use cases for hardware tessellation . Hardware tessellation is removed from UE5EA. For unsupported cases, users may need higher-resolution assets.

Lumen will replace Light Propagation Volumes and World Distance Field Global Illumination (DFGI).

• Compared with Light Propagation Volumes, Lumen offers more features and much higher quality and is actively developed, but has a higher baseline performance cost.

• DFGI was experimental; use Lumen for dynamic global illumination instead.

• Over time, reflections and global illumination in Lumen will replace most ray-tracing features with similar or higher quality.

The legacy Tonemapper , deprecated in UE4, is absent from UE5EA. No developer action is required.

Deprecations #

• Deprecation is planned for Cascade in UE5 5.0, with removal in a later release. UE5EA developers should switch to Niagara . An automatic Cascade-to-Niagara converter is in development.

• Some Ray Tracing features are moving from the standalone system into Lumen hardware ray tracing. Reflections and global illumination will be integrated directly into Lumen for a unified experience and broader engine-feature support. See Rendering above.

World Building #

Deprecations #

World Partition is UE5EA's large-world streaming system. UE4's World Composition remains available but is deprecated, with no further upgrades, fixes, or support, and removal planned for a future UE5 version.

To convert maps to World Partition, run WorldPartitionConvertCommandletin your project, providing one map name at a time. For example, convert TM_WorldComp_P, located at /Game/Maps/Tools/Landscape/TM_WorldComp_Pin the QAGameproject, by launching the editor with:

QAGame -run=WorldPartitionConvertCommandlet TM_WorldComp_P -ConversionSuffix -SCCProvider=None

This converts TM_WorldComp_Pto World Partition. The -ConversionSuffixoption saves it as TM_WorldComp_P_WPinstead of overwriting the original. The -SCCProvider=Noneoption prevents source-control interaction. The process also creates TM_WorldComp_P.iniwith conversion settings for this and possible future conversions. It builds runtime grids from World Composition data and assigns Actors to appropriate grids.

Tools #

Removals #

New geometry-editing tools will replace the legacy Editable Mesh plugin .

Movie Render Queue will replace Movie Scene Capture .

VR Level Editing will be reduced to VR Preview, while UE5EA retains Virtual Production Scouting.

Take Recorder will replace Sequence Recorder . Take Recorder includes all Sequence Recorder features.

The Camera Animation Sequences system will replace Camera Anims Camera Anims.

UE5EA also removes editor feature packs associated with removed plugins. Projects must not reference the removed content.

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Deprecations #

Sequencer will replace Matinee fully after UE5's full release. Matinee is deprecated but remains in UE4.

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Audio #

Removals #

Unreal Audio Mixer will replace Legacy Audio backends discontinued by UE5 5.0. No user action is required. UE5 defaults to Audio Mixer and modern backends compatible with existing audio features.

Deprecations #

Volumes for Audio , Class Mixes for Audio, and Cues for Audio will be deprecated by UE5 5.0, with removal planned later.

• Sound Cues will be replaced by MetaSounds , available in UE5 5.0.

• Sound Class Mix will be replaced by Modulation and Submix , which are available now.

• Audio Volumes will be replaced by a new system in development, planned for UE5 5.0.

Users are encouraged to adopt the new systems as soon as possible.

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Gameplay Framework #

Removals #

The Blueprint Nativization feature is absent from UE5EA. Existing projects should function without changes, but performance may be affected. If it is, use other optimization approaches.

Static Meshes #

Deprecations #

Deprecation is planned for AES, RSA, and RSA encryption handlers from UE5 5.0, with removal planned later. Only DTLS is used at this stage.

• AES GCM remains after UE5 5.0 but will be removed later. Early Access projects need no changes for this.

Core #

Removals #

Zen Loader will replace the Event-Driven Loader . Most users do not interact with it directly, so migration requires no action.

Deprecations #

Unreal Insights tools will replace the Stats system after UE5 5.0's full release. Stats remains in UE5 5.0 but will eventually be removed in favor of Unreal Insights.