Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 1 is here and there’s a lot to unpack. From a new map, to more Battle Pass crossovers, the new season looks to impress. However, not all upgrades are on the surface. The game has gone through a deep overhaul, and is now based on Unreal Engine 5.1. On the technical front, this is a big step forward as fans now have acesss to features like Temporal Super Resolution and other visual enhancements.
Here’s everything new in the latest update.
Also read: Genshin Impact 3.4 banner: New characters – Alhaitham, Yaoyao, Hu Tao, events, maps and more
What visual upgrade will players see in Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 1?
Chapter 4 is here. Drop in now. #FortniteChapter4 pic.twitter.com/Ohdz7pnl3i
— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) December 4, 2022
On Epic Games’ blog, the developers laid out how Unreal Engine 5.1 would benefit the games’ visual presentation:
Nanite
Nanite provides highly-detailed architectural geometry. Specifically, buildings are rendered from millions of polygons in real time, and each brick, stone, wood plank, and wall trim is modeled. Natural landscapes are highly-detailed too. Individual trees have around 300,000 polygons, and each stone, flower, and blade of grass is modeled.
Lumen
Lumen reflections provide high-quality ray traced reflections on glossy materials and water. Also, Lumen provides real-time global illumination at 60 FPS. You’ll see beautiful interior spaces with bounce lighting, plus characters reacting to the lighting of their surroundings. (For example, red rugs may bounce red light onto your Outfit.) Also, Outfits that have emissive (a.k.a. glowing) qualities will scatter light on nearby objects and surfaces.
Virtual Shadow Maps
Virtual Shadow Maps allow for highly detailed shadowing. Each brick, leaf, and modeled detail will cast a shadow, and character self-shadowing is extremely accurate. This means that things like hats and other small details on characters will also cast shadows.
Temporal Super Resolution (TSR)
Temporal Super Resolution is an upgrade over Temporal Anti-Aliasing in Fortnite, and allows for high-quality visuals at a high framerate.
All of these features will made available across platforms and are not PC exclusive. PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and cloud gaming users can drop into Chapter 4 today to get a head start on their Battle Pass.
