Technical Update
[p]We’ve recently migrated New Arc Line to Unreal Engine 5.6. This was an important technical milestone for the project and a necessary step for future development, especially as we push bigger scenes, denser environments, and more demanding visuals.[/p][p]The engine update required a significant amount of work. Over the past several months, the team has been focused on:[/p]- [p]updating and adapting core systems to the new engine version[/p][/*]
- [p]restoring functionality that temporarily stopped working after the migration[/p][/*]
- [p]stabilizing performance, builds, and content loading after the upgrade[/p][p][/p][/*]
Why UE 5.5 and 5.6 matter for us
UE 5.5 baseline: better rendering performance and higher fidelity
[p]By moving through 5.5 on the way to 5.6, we’re also inheriting a set of major upgrades:[/p]- [p]Lumen performance leap, improving real-time lighting while helping maintain smooth frame rates in complex scenes.[/p][/*]
- [p]Major improvements to runtime streaming of static content, plus the Fast Geometry Streaming to load more immutable world geometry faster while keeping frame rates steadier.[/p][/*]
- [p]Additional streaming-related engine work like asynchronous physics state creation/destruction, reducing hitching when content streams in/out.[/p][/*]
- [p]Updated 60 FPS–oriented device profiles, reducing setup friction and giving a stronger performance baseline on current-gen targets.[/p][/*]
- [p]Wider performance work with new GPU profiling tools, including renderer parallelization improvements. [/p][/*]
Mass upgrade perspective (better crowds over time)
[p]With the 5.6 baseline stabilized, we’re also better positioned to lean into UE’s Mass framework for scalable simulation:[/p]- [p]MassEntity provides a gameplay-focused, data-oriented framework that’s a good fit for high-volume agent logic.[/p][/*]
- [p]The MassCrowd toolset includes dedicated systems for crowd spawning and representation—e.g., a crowd spawner subsystem and a representation subsystem responsible for visuals (including handling actor spawning / static mesh instances).[/p][/*]
