Unreal Engine 5.4: Big Performance Improvements, New Features, But What About #StutterStruggle?

Progress with Unreal Engine 5 continues apace with the latest 5.4 revision of the engine, delivering big performance increases and new features, including improvements to ray tracing. Epic's also trying to tackle #StutterStruggle, but to what extend has it succeeded, both in demo software and in Fortnite - the firm's Unreal Engine Showcase?

00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:41 CPU Performance: 5.0 vs. 5.4
00:06:33 #StutterStruggle?
00:12:03 Visual Improvements in UE5
00:15:54 The Future and the Conclusion

[kraithaywire]

We'll land on mars before shader compilation stutters are fixed in UE.

[nothankyoutube]

Yeesh the lighting under the bridge in 5.4 is fireworks

[Dr.Dp]

DF to Epic...what about shader stutterring?

Epic to DF...Ye, Ye, Yes.

[vanvelt]

One note to the Reflection issue showing at 15:38:
Lumen has a CVAR which is a cutoff that determines if raytraced or screen space reflections (You called it probe based) should be used by lumen. This is set globally so materials with a certain roughness value do not use raytraced reflections. In UE5.4 this now is a setting in the scenes postprocessing. It is possible that UE5.0 used a different value for this setting than the default of 0.4 and is now overwritten. If i.e. 0.3 or lower would have been used. noise gets reduced significantly which in turn reduces accuracy but improves performance.

[itsuadman]

That demo was 3 years ago... god damn whered the time go

[aL_]

12:29 that guy is really interested in the parking rules

[monkfishy]

It's also worth pointing out, that every driver update will bring back that stuttering too. Which is a real pain. It's not just a "first play experience", it's a "first play experience every few weeks".

[kotztotz]

UE 5.4: "Ddddid I stutter? Well yes I did..."

[andyward]

All I hope when watching DF videos is that the developers and publishers are listening and taking notes. You guys do such a good job of offering advice through your videos that would benefit everyone.

[floppa]

The fact that stuttering still isn't fixed is surreal, unreal you might even say!

[kendog]

'a frametime graph that looks like post-modern art'

never change Alex... never change

[guitaristkuro]

The shader comp is insane in games like Fortnite, which on a fresh install means a few games that are literally a slideshow going from 144 FPS to 20 constantly until you play a few matches.

[taliesinsilvercrow]

5:21 the frame-time graph looks like the city its trying to render

[Vertignasse]

With that music it's impossible not to imagine a UT capture the flag match on Facing Worlds with these graphics.

[NoahSteelyee]

intro track id for those wandering: Michiel van den Bos - Forgone Destruction

[sillymikey]

I wish they’d update the demo on consoles like kind of a UE5.4 tech demo for users.

[ledheavy]

I will take frames and no stutter over a window reflection or a better looking brick wall every single time. Its really WILD that they are just now working on multi-core performance improvements considering how long multi core cpus have been around. Its also still wild to me that we are so obsessed with and pushing for technolgies that cant even run well at the standard resolutions we use now (4k is the tv standard, 1440 pc standard) without upscaling, and even then you need to have the top tier equipment for an experience plauged by stuttering to look at a window reflection or to stare at a brick wall to see how the sun reflects. Im not saying we shouldnt be pushing for these new plateaus but cmon guys, lets build on solid foundations here and not sand.

[awesomereviews]

Super Castlevania IV Simon’s theme kicks ass in the background!

[Iskra_Audio]

Trying to figure out UE5 as an audio person has been fun 😂

[Whatthetrash]

I saw a video recently -- "Optimizing my Game so it Runs on a Potato" by @Blargis3d. He's making an indie game and was having the same compilation stutter problem. He solved it in kind of a genius way. When the game starts, before every level, he has a black loading screen. Thing is --- it's a trick. What he's *actually* doing behind that black screen, is playing the game at 10 times speed, walking in every room, loading every texture and killing every enemy. That way, all of the hitching and loading that has to happen, happens during that period. Then, when the 'loading' completes and the player plays the level, it's actually the *second* time that all of those assets are loaded. Thus -- complete elimination of compilation stutter.

This was the first time I ever heard of this (I didn't even know such a thing was possible) and thought it was really cool. Thus, sharing it here. :)