Why Unreal Engine 5 is so bloated?

Why Unreal Engine 5 is so frigging bloated??? It requires 35Gb of free space just for its “core components” alone. WTF??? Even UE4 requires only a half of that.

Update:

I have investigated the matter and here is what I found:

  • Unreal Engine 5.0.3 takes ~31Gb of free space.
  • Out of those 31Gb the engine itself is only ~12.1Gb.
  • The rest (18.7Gb) is plugins, extras, documentation.
  • Plugins folder is ~18.1Gb.
  • Out of those 18.1Gb the “PythonFoundationPackages” folder takes ~10.6Gb (“Linux” folder is ~4.36Gb, “Mac” folder is 496Mb and “Win” folder is 5.77Gb).

Update 2:

After doing some rough cleanup and deleting the “garbage” I was forced to download (i.e. files unrelated to my targeted platform) I was able the reduce the engine size from 31Gb to 21Gb. And that’s just a rough cleanup.

In other words, even if you set your target platform as “Windows”, you will be “forced” to download and store more than 10Gb of files related to the other platforms like Android, Mac, Linux, Arm64, etc.

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Every software nowadays is bloated for some reason. 3ds max is 9GB for example, Maya is 3GB without substance and Bifrost. Back to the point, I would like to have more control on what I install. I Already skip installing templates cause those are 3.2GB alone. I don’t use Python nor do I need it so I would like to skip this package…

I agree, but Epic Games would give Autodesk a ‘run for their money’. Here is the kicker: Photoshop + DaVinci Resolve + Maya + Unreal Engine 4.27 + CryEngine 5 all together require as much space as Unreal Engine 5.1 alone!

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nanite, lumen, mesh editing tools
they added a lot to 5
its also still not completely ready until 5.1 is out of preview
you can set in the engine settings on install to not dl linux and mac pkgs
there is another thread where someone had somehow activated every build platform
but you can specify only win 64 and android
mine is 44g
IDK
its worth it to me
there significant motion controller node changes for vr
so its best to work with 5 if your machine can run it
it will take a couple months for the 5.1 preview to stabilize and it will slim a bit then.

Build sizes are very nice.
it seems like a lot of bloat
yes
I worked for years with the doom 3 gpl engine and my whole build was 250 megs
but
ue is nice and clicky clicky friendly with realtime preview and tons of premade goodies
when I build for win 64 or android my base filesize for a simple level exe is only 250meg in unreal if its low textures.
so that’s pretty decent I think

it helps to put your proj/ddc/vaultcache folders on different drives than the engine.
only the engine is on my C:
everything else is on different storage

If you know a bit about build pipelines you could download the engine source, create a custom build that removes a lot of stuff that you don’t use. Specially Python modules.

@BrUnO_XaVIeR

Could you provide some example or point me towards any resources on this topic?
I’m looking for a way to decrease full recompilation times.

I only use around 25 engine plugins (by default engine uses about 90 or even more)
but since those plugins are dynamically loaded and can be toggled at any time, building the project still compiles everything.

Is this something that can be done through .Target.cs file?