I am starting work on a new game, but I do not intend to use Nanite or Lumen. I’ll be using only dynamic lighting like in UE4 as well as Meta Sounds. My question is, are there any missing features in UE5 compared to 4.27? Will I be better off using UE5 or should I let go of Metasounds and use UE 4.27 instead?
UE5 is in early access, I don’t recommend using it for anything other than experimentation.
I’m working on a project that definitely won’t launch before UE5 goes public, so I thought it would be a good idea to update my UE 4.26 project to UE5. Didn’t make it even a whole day before I had to rollback to UE 4.26 due to some critical broken features in UE5 Early Access 2.
Hi All @watcheroftimes , @Vacui
Project from Ue5 EA2 will be upgradeable to the final version in 2022, at the moment it’s best to use 4.26 versions to upgrade to UE5.
Therefore keep a copy of the 4.26 version. IMHO it’s better NOT to upgrade to 4.27, due to current problems converting from 4.27.
I have not experienced the same problems in converting from 4.19 to 4.26 projects.
IMHO The main problems are to do with Virtual Studio Production features introduced in 4.27.1
Summary
Carry on using 4.26 for projects delivered in the next 6 months. To really test UE5 you will need to build the latest release source to experience Nanit and Lumen EA2 binary July 2021 is now over 6 months old.
2 Likes
Depending on the project, Virtual Shadow Maps, Temporal Super Resolution, and World Partition might be enough of a reason to upgrade.
1 Like
I’m waiting on Lumen for Landscapes. Everything else in my 4.26 projects will upgrade to UE5 pretty directly, static meshes to nanite, etc. I look to be able to just-realize performance benefits and the like.
Otherwise, I use displacement/tessellation as I can. I might be able to fake it with just WPO but that isn’t part of Nanite yet either. Further, I can see how I can change the pipeline and just sidestep the need with dense-dense nanite models, but again, back to Lumen for Landscapes… 
1 Like
I’m mainly interested in using Dynamic Lighting (not Lumen) with Nanite. What do you think is better for that - 4.26 or 5?
If you are looking to use Nanite at all, then you need UE5. And if you are going to use UE5, us Lumen w/Nanite, they are made to go together.
I would tell everyone to use UE5 personally, unless they have a specific reason not to.
I would use ue5 if you’re just starting a game (I assume you’re a long way from completion). You can search through this sub and see lots of things are broken in ue5 but they’ll get fixed eventually (I hope).
I’m continuing to develop my own open world game project foundations in 4.26, and will only update that to 4.27 if Epic indicates that’s a better or needed step before upgrading to 5.0. Other than experimenting, I’m not building anything in 5 until a stable version goes GM.
World Partition/Data Layers/One File Per Actor features, and Lumen are the areas I’m initially most interested in. WP in a sense completely redefines how we think about levels, and Lumen is obviously a foundation for an open world game where the primary lighting strategy will be dynamic. At the time the earlier major feature area videos were released, it sounded like integration of Landscapes and perhaps the Foliage system were still very much a WIP, and I’m waiting for a status update on all of that (Early Access 3? official release?).
So to the original poster’s question, once the major features are stable and 5.0 is released, if I were just getting started at that point, I’d start with 5.0. There are many improvements to the UI/UX alone. And obviously, going forward it is going to get all of the development team love.
At this point though, a key benefit for newcomers to UE in starting out with 4.26 or .27 is that all of the demo/example projects including e.g. ContentExamples will work just fine.
1 Like