Greetings! Credit goes to this thread: Is Niagara fluid template Grid2D_Gas_Color broken in 5.4 / 5.5 ?
Apparently, Niagara Fluids runs very smoothly in UE5.3, but becomes nearly unusable in 5.5, even with the same setup.
One trick I found to temporarily fix the lag: just click the Compile button in the Niagara System editor whenever the editor starts to lag. Boom, everything runs smooth again… until you make another change to the system. Not ideal, but it works for now!
So now you have two options:
- Use UE 5.3 for fluid simulations
- Wait for Epic’s next 5.5 updates to (hopefully) fix the performance issues
Hope this helps someone else stuck with the same frustration 