'You name it, we made it faster'—The State of Unreal keynote didn't just show off Unreal Engine 5.4 graphical goodies, but major performance optimisations too

A screenshot from the State of Unreal address at GDC 2024, showing a character riding a futuristic motorbike across the sand in the upcoming Dune game with a spaceship on fire above.

Epic has delivered its annual keynote at this years GDC 2024, the "State of Unreal" address, and while there were plenty of demos showing off the expected graphical improvements and the addition of new tools and features to the latest version of Unreal Engine 5, some performance improvements were also announced to help our poor, ailing machines deal with all that fidelity.

While the presentation kicked off with a surprise look at Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra and some very impressive facial animations and Nanite-based effects, Epic's Vice President of Engineering for Unreal Engine Simon Torangeau later took to the stage to deliver a tech talk on the upcoming optimisations to the latest version, Unreal Engine 5.4.