Hi,
So the SSR in 5.3 was better than in the newer 5.7 version. Here is a slight comparison.
All settings are the same in the post process volume, the material is the same,everything is set to epic. ignore the color difference.
Especially the pipe reflection is terrible.
Anyone know what the issue could be? Did Epic tweak the SSR in version 5.7?
Thanks.
5.7 did not keep the 5.3 screen-space reflection path as the default, so the same Epic scalability and the same post-process sliders are not the same shader.
On a default 5.7 project the reflection method is Lumen. The Screen Space Reflections controls on the post process volume are only the screen-trace part of Lumen. A 5.3 project on Epic was usually still the older full-screen SSR, which spent more samples on glossy surfaces and looked sharper on a thin pipe.
Check Project Settings, Rendering, Reflections, and any override on the post process volume. If 5.7 says Lumen and 5.3 says Screen Space, that is the difference in your shot. To compare the old behavior, set the reflection method to Screen Space on the 5.7 project as well.
If you want to stay on Lumen, a pipe is the case screen traces lose. The reflection ray has to actually hit the pipe in screen space. An edge-on pipe, or one that leaves the frame, falls back to a blur. Raise Reflection Quality, and if the GPU can take it turn on Hardware Ray Tracing reflections. Screen traces alone will not reconstruct that pipe the way 5.3 SSR did.
For the comparison, set the pipe roughness to the same value on both. Even a small roughness is blurred much harder by Lumen than by the old SSR. Then compare one frame with the reflection method forced to Screen Space against the Lumen default, so you can see which change actually caused it.
Hey!
Just read ChenDong’s reply and he hit the nail on the head! UE 5.7 defaults to using Lumen for reflection passes which means screen traces for the purposes of reflections work differently (and better) than the legacy SSR in 5.3.
I’d definitely try what he suggested to test both scenarios
To get the exact 5.3 look back
Go to Project Settings → Rendering → Reflections (or inside your Post Process Volume) and switch the Reflection Method explicitly from Lumen to Screen Space (SSR)
That should revert the pipeline back to the older shader that sampled thin objects like your pipe much sharper.
If you want to stick with Lumen
Like ChenDong mentioned, screen traces in Lumen struggle with thin edge-on geometry like pipes and fall back to a softer blur.
If your hardware supports it, try enabling Hardware Ray Tracing for Lumen reflections under Project Settings or bump up the Lumen Reflection Quality in your Post Process Volume.
If you want to dive deeper into how Lumen handles screen traces versus ray tracing, here are a couple of handy resources:
Epic Documentation:
