Still no word on Nanite compatibility whatsoever (Intel or Metal) even with the 5.1 roadmap. Probably will be a feature in 5.2 (hopefully).
1 Like
Hey guys, it seems I’ve caught unexpected interest in a project unrelated to UE5, and probably won’t finish the Nanite port myself. I did the most difficult work, so it’s at a point where someone else can finish it. All you have to do is fix the remaining bugs (where I left off) and implement the 64-bit atomics workaround. It should work on both Intel and M1 Macs.
As far as I understand, Epic is not working on Nanite (or VSM) support internally. However, I think they would be very supportive if the community ported it and made a pull request.
6 Likes
So is Nanite going to work with Metal?
1 Like
Just downloaded 5.1 on my Intel Mac. Nanite doesn’t work. 
Maybe 5.2…
2 Likes
Mesh Shaders supported by Metal 3 API, probably we will see it in 5.2
Moreover Mesh Shaders technology was also added to Vulkan. Linux users could also get Nanite like mac ones.
1 Like
I have a feeling that Nanite will come eventually. We just got to be patient. At least Lumen works! 
2 Likes
I don’t think Nanite will come on its own. Although it’s appealing to support Metal and DX11 through the 32-bit atomics workaround, Epic isn’t financially motivated to do so. I just hope another open-source volunteer comes along with time to spare, and finishes my work. It shouldn’t be that difficult!
Sorry for leaving you guys sooo close to having Nanite, but not going all the way.
4 Likes
Hey guys and @RichmarIII
could you please explain how you made Lumen working or did it just work perfectly out of the box?
I built the UE 5.1.0 release for Silicon and Lumen Global Illumination doesnt seem to work. It produces just a tiny bit of GI with weird light bleeding and wrong lights in the corners, and depending on where I move the camera this even changes. If I switch my lights and meshes to static and build the lighting I dont have ANY light and GI at all, the scene is pitch black.
I also tried Standalone Ray Traced which gives me NO global illumination from movable lights at all. Only if I switch everything to static and build the lighting I have correct light and GI.
Further point lights dont work at all when movable (both for Lumen and Standalone Ray Traced), they dont provide any light and only some tiny bit of weird and wrong GI. They only work when set to static within Standalone Ray Traced but not in Lumen no matter if static or movable.
Screenshot with Lumen and everything set to movable:
This is what “Lumen Scene” shows:
I dont attach a Screenshot when everything is set to static because the scene is pitch black then, as I mentioned.
1 Like
Lumen for 5.1 is a little janky right now…they will probably release a hotfix for it soon. For the meantime use 5.0.3 for a more stable editor. Lumen should work for Silicon in that version.
1 Like
I wasnt able to build 5.0.x because I had some errors when creating project files and in XCode I didnt had the option to build. Maybe it is related to macOS Ventura and Xcode 14 and they fixed it in 5.1?
Will switch back to Unity which is working perfectly on macs + native on Apple Silicon.
That’s unfortunate - I have tried both Unity and Unreal, and found Unreal was the best engine!
Maybe it is related to macOS Ventura and Xcode 14
There have been new build issues coming from Xcode 14, at least the beta. For me, they came when building UE5 from source. Could you report the specific error you faced?
How can Unreal be better if it isnt working at all? Silicon Macs have been introduced end of 2020 and still Epic didnt manage to support it. Unity showed native support in mid 2021 and they dont even have close as much money (and therefor resources) as Epic does. Still Unity and also Blender run perfectly without anything missing. Even the tiny Godot engine has native Silicon support. Its a shame Epic.
1 Like
I’d say UE5 > Unity > UE4. I concluded that mostly from a 3D graphics perspective, UE has the best quality. Especially with version 5, which cleaned up the editor and made it more user-friendly. This closed the gap in user-friendliness with Unity.
Also UE5 is open source (Unity is not) which means we can do things like port Nanite to macOS ourselves.
Perhaps not a surprise, given the legal battle Apple encountered with Epic. A few months after the first UE5 teaser was announced.
2 Likes
I have received an unconfirmed claim that Apple engineers said the M2 chip supports 64-bit (only ulong min/max?) atomics, and all other chips don’t. If anyone on this thread has an M2, I kindly ask you to volunteer to help me confirm this claim.
Even if true, we shouldn’t leave M1 users behind and restrict Nanite to M2. Or, for that matter, continue leaving Windows users with older graphics cards out of the fun.
3 Likes
Lumen works quite fine… but Lumen Reflection is not too good yet… lots of black spots…
How can I fix this?
Someone tested 64-bit integer max on A16; it doesn’t work.
1 Like
Doesn’t work on an AMD GPU with native 64-bit atomics either (source). So pretty much all of us Mac users need to rely on atomic64 emulation.
1 Like
I’m curious how peeps are getting Lumen working adequately. I started this thread here comparing my M1 Max 32GB Macbook (Ventura 13.1)
I’ve adjust
I’ve even recently tried a few settings here and still really dark/black shadows
