Fortnite: New Update Significantly Changes the Game’s Graphics

Fortnite Chapter 4 Season 1 has brought a lot of new content to the game, but the most significant change is probably the next-gen graphics, thanks to Unreal Engine 5.1.

Chapter 4 is here. Drop in now. #FortniteChapter4 pic.twitter.com/Ohdz7pnl3i

— Fortnite (@FortniteGame) December 4, 2022

Unreal Engine 5’s features such as Nanite, Lumen, Virtual Shadow Maps, and Temporal Super Resolution are also available on Fortnite now.

Here’s what these Unreal Engine 5 features do in Fortnite

Nanite

Nanite makes very detailed buildings including each part of a structure such as brick, stone, wood plank, etc. using millions of polygons in real time. Not only buildings, but natural landscapes get very detailed as well with individual trees having as much as 300,000 polygons.

Lumen

Lumen provides high-quality reflections on water and shiny objects in the game. It also provides real-time global illumination at 60 FPS. Interior locations will have bounce lighting, as well as lighting that will reflect from the character’s outfit, and outfits that glow will scatter light on nearby objects.

Virtual Shadow Maps

Virtual Shadow Maps bring high-quality shadows to Fortnite. Every object in the game, including individual leaves, will cast a shadow. Every detail from your character’s outfit, such as a hat, will also cast a shadow.

Temporal Super Resolution (TSR)

TSR will bring high-quality visuals at high FPS in Fortnite.

Updates to video settings on Fortnite PC

Fortnite Battle Royale on PC has new settings for graphics, such as DirectX 12 enabled by default for PCs with high-end GPUs. Temporal Super Resolution is added with options such as recommended, performance, balanced, quality, native, and custom. The “Nanite Virtualized Geometry” setting will only be available if you have the rendering mode set to DirectX 12.

Other additions include settings for global illumination, reflections, and hardware ray tracing. Some options have also been moved from the graphics to the display section of the settings.

With the exclusion of Temporal Super Resolution, features such as Nanite, Lumen, and Virtual Shadow Maps are not available in creator-made islands or Save the World.