In an interview, the CEO and founder of Fortnite and Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, discussed the future of the Unreal Engine, which focuses on server and network structure with its sixth version.
What is this new technology? In an interview with Dualshockers, the CEO of Epic Games and Fortnite, Tim Sweeney, spoke about the future of the Unreal Engine in its sixth version. The engine powers Fortnite, along with other well-known games such as Hogwarts Legacy and Black Myth: Wukong.
Currently, the engine is in its fifth version. Now, the CEO discussed the new update and what improvements are expected.
Here you can watch the trailer for Fortnite Chapter 5 Season 3.
Fortnite with 1,000,000,000 players at the same time
What is the focus of the update? With version 6 of the engine, the main aim is to improve the server and network structure. In the future, it should be possible to support millions of players, if not a billion players, simultaneously.
One of the major efforts we are making for Unreal Engine 6 is improving the network model, where we have servers that can support many players as well as the ability to move players seamlessly between servers and allow all servers in one data center or across multiple data centers to communicate with each other and coordinate a simulation on the scale of millions or perhaps even a billion simultaneous players in the future.
Tim Sweeney
The CEO hints that Fortnite could have lobbies with 200 players in the not-too-distant future. Previously, that was technically impossible. “We couldn’t [back then] create 200 players on a server,” he states as an example of the limitations imposed by the engine.
How do the limits affect us today? The current limits are the reason Fortnite is “divided into a variety of different islands,” the CEO explains. It is currently not possible for map creators to bring their content together into one large world.
Currently, the servers of Epic Games cannot communicate with each other, leading to the situation where Fortnite could have 10 million players, but each would play on their own “separate, isolated copy of the world.”
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