UE5 was released in early access yesterday, so I downloaded and put together a quick scene using Quixel Megascans.

Summary of first impressions:

- Lumen is gorgeous and very performant compared to the Raytracing thing they were trying out earlier - was averaging a steady 60fps throughout on an aging 1080ti (I refuse to pay scalping prices so I wait)
- Wasn't able to utilize the Nanite meshes (the Nanite versions of the meshes wouldn't complete their download) - but apparently the technology is working in the background throughout - I have another very heavy scene that I want to try out and see if there's big performance increase - looks very promising - though asset sizes are huge!
- UI is beautifully remade - one of the things which always put me off UE4 was that garish UI and those Windows95 era icons. Thankfully it's been streamlined and modernised
-Quixel bridge now lives permanently within the editor but its current implementation is incomplete (ie lacking some functionality like being able to set folders where assets are downloaded etc). This is convenient to an extent but you still go through the process of finding, selecting, downloading, exporting to engine - you basically save a click or an alt+tab but sure!

All in all - looks pretty good. I'm happiest with the Lumen GI solution cause it's pretty lovely so far!