"Fortnite" is moving to a new game engine for its upcoming Chapter 3: Epic Games' very own Unreal Engine 5.

This comes after Epic founder/CEO Tim Sweeney first announced that the popular free-to-play battle royale title would be moving to UE5 in mid-2021, reports IGN. Now, it is all systems go for the move as "Fortnite" Chapter 3 is right on the horizon.

Unreal Engine's official Twitter page made the announcement:

With the arrival of Chapter 3, @FortniteGame development has flipped to Unreal Engine 5.

We're excited to share this journey with you and are working to make this the best experience possible for the entire Fortnite community.

— Unreal Engine (@UnrealEngine) December 7, 2021

What this means is that "Fortnite," which used to be built on Unreal Engine 4, will likely be next-gen in terms of visuals and visual effects. It also means that the game will likely be the first one ever to actually fully use UE5.

PCGamer reports that to prepare for the shift, the game had a larger-than-normal update to make way for the slew of improvements coming to it. Among these are new mechanics like lightning strikes, massive tornadoes, and even log destruction.

Aside from that, Epic also showed off new environment and weather effects, which were among the biggest new features highlighted in the latest Chapter 3 trailer:

Unreal Engine 5 was first unveiled in Early Access back in late May, to mostly raving reception from critics and fans alike. It was designed to cater to new gaming hardware, such as those on the Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 consoles, though it seemed like AMD GPUs and CPUs were at the forefront.

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What Fans Can Expect From The Big 'Fortnite' UE5 Change

Among the biggest things, fans of the battle royale game could expect is a far smoother ride.

Since Epic made it clear that AMD GPUs and CPUs were their priority with UE5, this could boost frame rates and make "Fortnite" run ever smoother on next-gen hardware and software. This could be due to the implementation of Team Red's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR).

As per PCGamesN, FSR is now an official plugin for Unreal Engine. It is an upscaling tech directly competing with NVIDIA's DLSS (which is also another UE plugin) that can boost frame rates significantly by rendering a game at a lower resolution, then upscaling it with not a lot of differences compared to native rendering.

There's no reason why Epic would not want "Fortnite" to support either FSR or DLSS on UE5, considering both upscaling technologies are already official engine plugins.

With higher frame rates (coupled with high-refresh rate displays), gamers playing Epic's fast-paced multiplayer battle royale would definitely benefit from the improved animation smoothness and overall responsiveness.

Lastly, UE5 employs its own, software-based version of ray tracing technology called Lumen (courtesy of Hardware Times), which could bring the visuals of "Fortnite" to next-gen levels.

There's no confirmation on whether Lumen (or FSR/DLSS) will be used for the game. But all of these features will certainly be in the running for potential graphical improvements that only UE5 can provide.

Exciting times are ahead.

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Written by RJ Pierce