Warhorse Studios Co-Founder Criticizes Unreal Engine 5 for Open-World Game Development
Daniel Vávra, co-founder of Warhorse Studios, the studio which created Kingdom Come Deliverance, has expressed skepticism about using Unreal Engine 5 for open-world game development. In an interview from February 2024, Vávra highlighted challenges associated with the engine, particularly its suitability for expansive, open-world environments.
Vávra noted that, at the time, Unreal Engine 5 struggled with certain aspects crucial to open-world games, such as efficient terrain and vegetation generation. He mentioned that while features like Nanite have improved, enabling better handling of vegetation, the engine was initially more suited for creating static environments like rocks rather than dynamic, expansive terrains.
He also referenced discussions with developers from CD Projekt RED, who transitioned to Unreal Engine 5 for their upcoming title, 'The Witcher 4.' According to Vávra, despite the engine's advancements, there were still significant hurdles in implementing open-world functionalities, even a year or two into development.
These insights shed light on the broader industry's challenges when adopting new technologies for complex game development. While Unreal Engine 5 offers innovative tools, developers may encounter obstacles in optimizing these features for large-scale, open-world projects.
As the gaming industry continues to evolve, the choice of development engines remains a critical decision, influencing both the development process and the final gaming experience. Vávra's comments underscore the importance of aligning technology choices with project requirements to achieve optimal results.
“In an interview from February 2024…”
Where was this article on this site a year ago?
The answer should become obvious when you see who is the “author” of this article.
Ok, I have seen plenty of videos of games griping out at Unreal Engine and others. Reality is more complicated than one game engine can not be able to render properly some parts of the games. Video game with whatever engine need high quality optimization. And the default optimization that almost always works best is for the latest version of PlayStation or Xbox. If developers want his game to play well on older versions of Consoles, they have to bring extra effort to do so. Almost the same effect on PC. If you’re running the latest and greatest power rig for $10-20K, you almost never have to worry about game rendering performance. However, if your gaming computer is entry level $1K, you need a highly optimized game or play only low resource, low frame rate games.
UE5 is called Stutter Engine for a reason. It does not matter if you have an entry level PC with Core i3 and RTX 4060 or a high end PC with AMD X3D CPU and RTX 4090. You can have incredible graphics and high FPS but stutters and TAA ghosting ruins the experience. Even Epic Games themselves admitted this problem recently: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/tech-blog/game-engines-and-shader-stuttering-unreal-engines-solution-to-the-problem