Image credit: CD Projekt RED
Epic Games dropped some exciting news yesterday with the launch of Unreal Engine 5.6, a big update aimed at making high-quality open-world games run smoothly at 60 frames per second on current consoles, powerful PCs, and even capable mobile devices. This release tackles some long-standing performance hiccups by fine-tuning rendering and streaming systems. One of the standout improvements is hardware-accelerated ray tracing for global illumination. By moving key tasks from the CPU to modern GPUs, developers can now create stunning lighting effects while keeping that steady 60 FPS. Paired with smoother Lumen routines, the environments look richer without slowing down. Plus, the new experimental Fast Geometry Streaming plugin lets large amounts of static geometry load on demand, cutting out those annoying stutters.
The update also makes transitions smoother with asynchronous physics state creation, so expansive levels won’t cause unexpected frame drops anymore. Unreal Engine 5.6 comes with updated device profiles for current consoles and PCs, which automatically tweak graphics settings to hit performance goals. This cuts down on manual adjustments and helps teams deliver great visuals at stable frame rates. You can see this in action with The Witcher 4, which runs at 60 FPS with ray tracing on the PlayStation 5 right out of the box—a sign that optimized, ray-traced open worlds with higher resolutions might become the new standard.
Beyond performance boosts, this update improves how creators work. Redesigned motion trails and a refreshed curve editor make keyframe tweaks faster, while MetaHuman Creator lets artists build digital humans directly in the engine. Tools for procedural worldbuilding, cinematic pipelines, and virtual production get a polish to speed up the process. The editor’s interface also gets a makeover with a reorganized Content Browser and a simpler toolbar, reducing clicks to access key tools. Features like incremental cooking and Zen Streaming help teams test changes on devices more quickly.
What do you think about this new Unreal Engine update? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
