Unreal Fest 2025: What's new with Unreal Engine and why we're watching?

Orlando brought the heat in more ways than one this June. Unreal Fest 2025, hosted by Epic Games, took off with over 190 sessions, ten industry tracks, and a crowd that mixed game developers, filmmakers, brand strategists, and technologists in one buzzing space.

Unreal Fest works because it pulls the industries shaping what we watch, play, and interact with into one room.

For Capture, it’s the kind of event we keep an eye on because Unreal’s updates expand beyond the gaming world; they usually slide directly into the workflows that power high-end brand content, live-events and immersive experiences.

This kind of tech is our kind of foreplay. And Unreal’s opener made sure everyone knew who’s running the show.

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The Witcher demo that stole the show

Epic opened with an unapologetic flex: a sprawling, real-time Witcher 4 demo in Unreal Engine 5.6, running at 60fps on a base PlayStation 5; the same off-the-shelf console you’ve got plugged in at home, not an insanely tricked-out dev machine.

Why it matters: it shows you can run massive, cinematic worlds on everyday kit, no quality drop, no excuses.

That’s huge for scalability. For brands, that translates to virtual sets, interactive spaces, and immersive brand worlds built faster, running smoother, and costing less.

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Highlights from the demo:

• Lumen lighting 2.0: Historically, enclosed sets were a pain point for real-time lighting, with flickers and heavy manual tweaks. The new system handles it cleanly and nails day-to-night transitions on the fly. On a virtual production stage, that means we can light an entire “24-hour” scene without touching a dimmer board.
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• Cloth simulation: Modular, lighter, and responsive. For product shoots, we can swap fabrics, textures, or styles instantly, with no reshoot needed.
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• Camera-cinematic seamlessness: Epic’s new sequencer tools eliminate the jarring cuts between gameplay-style shots and cinematic moments. For brand films, that means smoother narrative flow.
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• Muscle simulation: Life-like muscle movement, now built straight into Unreal Engine. One less reason to bounce between tools like Maya or Houdini, and one more reason to move faster.
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• Nanite foliage & voxel LOD: Fully modelled leaves and branches that interact with light and cast true shadows, without hammering performance. Dense virtual sets just got easier.
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• GPU-powered animation framework: Multi-threaded, massively scalable animation that keeps frame rates high, even in crowded, complex scenes.
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• MetaHuman 5.6: Built straight into Unreal, with deeper control over body, skin, and style. Facial capture from any camera, and new Maya/Houdini plug-ins to keep pipelines tight.

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What the pros are saying

We weren’t the only ones clocking the possibilities. On the ground in Orlando, creators were calling the FastGeo Plugin “a standout” for streaming massive static environments without losing fidelity. Others were raving about Twinmotion’s faster visualisation tools, and picturing how pixel streaming could let clients explore spaces from a browser in real time.

The theme was the same across the board: Unreal’s latest update is sexier than ever; faster, more consolidated, and designed to pull external processes into the engine, giving creators more control with less pipeline pain.

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Brand-relevant tools worth noting

Beyond the Witcher spectacle, these updates have direct implications for commercial content and campaigns:

• RealityScan 2.0:  More accurate object capture for photoreal products, perfect for e-commerce assets or hero visuals.
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• Fab in launcher: No more hopping between platforms to grab assets, it’s all in one place.
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• FastGeo plugin: For large-scale event builds or virtual tours, it keeps environments smooth and seamless.
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• AI NPC tools in UEFN (Unreal Editor for Fortnite): Epic’s world-building toolkit for Fortnite just got smarter. Add AI characters that greet, guide, and chat, perfect for branded worlds or interactive campaigns.

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Unreal Fest: From Orlando to everywhere

Orlando might have been the headline act, but Unreal Fest is now a year-long, global tour: Bali in June, Shanghai and Seoul in August, Stockholm in September, Tokyo in November.

Each stop picks up the thread with its own industry flavour, regional case studies, and live tests of the features first revealed on the main stage.

For us in the UK, Stockholm is the one to watch later this year; it’s Europe’s chance to bring Unreal’s big ideas a little closer to home.

Whether in the room or livestreaming, this is where conversations turn into concepts, and concepts turn into shoots. It’s definitely the place to be.

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The virtual production boom

Virtual production is scaling fast. Valued at $3.83B this year, the market is projected to hit $10.07B by 2032, with adoption spreading well beyond North America’s 33% share.

The tools Epic revealed in Orlando — faster lighting, smarter asset streaming, integrated animation, and advanced character systems — are built for every corner of the industry.

For Capture, that means using the same innovations driving film and TV to deliver high-end, immersive brand content with shorter timelines, tighter control, and smarter budgets.

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Why Capture is watching closely

We don’t wait for tech to trickle into commercial work. The updates Epic rolled out this year are already on our virtual stages: Lumen upgrades for dynamic lighting, MetaHuman integration for fully custom digital talent, and more.

The result is less time lost to workarounds, fewer tool hand-offs, and more time pushing the creative.

Unreal Fest 2025 was a clear signal that the lines between film, gaming, and branded content have disappeared. The teams that get that are the ones shaping what’s next.

Let’s turn your brand into something Unreal, get in touch to find out more.