Today, during the opening keynote of Unreal Fest Orlando 2025, Epic Games announced the release of the next decimal update of Unreal Engine, numbered 5.6.
Following the impressive gameplay demo of The Witcher 4, the livestream showcased the features of the new version, starting with the fact that it’s shifting toward being more efficient at rendering open worlds, which have been a weak point of the engine before.
Enhancements to the Hardware Ray Tracing system are designed to improve the performance of Lumen Global Illumination by eliminating CPU bottlenecks.
An experimental Fast Geometry Streaming Plugin lets developer loads more static geometry in their worlds and have it load faster without tanking frame rates. Asynchronous physics state creation and destruction will also bring further improvements over content streaming.
The engine now includes device profiles optimized to achieve 60 FPS on current-gen consoles and desktop PCs, allowing developers to have specific performance targets to meet.
Motion Trails have been overhauled, letting devs adjust their arcs and spacing directly in the viewport while choosing different styles. Tween Tools have also received an overhaul, allowing developers to fine-tune their animations more quickly and with better control.
The Curve Editor has been redesigned, aiming for speed and performance, on top of the implementation of a new Lattice tool and Smart Key snapping feature for greater control over dense keyframe data.
The Sequencer has been updated to provide better control over timelines with a new Sequencer Navigation tool. Another experimental feature allows the creation and sculpting of morph targets directly in the editor with the Skeletal Mesh Editor.
Further animation improvements include Control Rig Physics and a new ragdoll physics feature.
MetaHuman creator is now fully integrated within the engine and includes the ability to scale the body and even the clothes over said body. MetaHuman Animator lets you animate MetaHumans with a commercial webcam or even a smartphone. I’m fairly sure that VTubers will love this.
New and updated procedural tools allow the creation of faster and better-performing worlds and biomes. This includes less CPU overhead, better GPU-based spawning at runtime, multithreading support, and more.
You can check out a video below, showing the features described here.
