Unreal Engine 5.8 adds mesh terrain, vegetation tools and Lumen Lite

Unreal Engine 5.8 is available now via the Epic Games Launcher. The headline features are Mesh Terrain and the Procedural Vegetation Editor (PVE), both experimental: Mesh Terrain generates full 3D meshes for large open-world landscapes, while PVE procedurally produces trees, bushes, reeds and grass that interact with existing world geometry.

PVE works alongside scene meshes—for example, it can 'grow' trees around a crumbled archway, taking into account natural light and competing vegetation. The update also includes MegaLights, which has moved from experimental to production-ready, and an experimental fog screen space scattering feature.

Performance-focused changes arrive too. UE5.8 adds Lumen Lite, a global-illumination mode Epic describes as twice as fast as Lumen High Quality while preserving much of the visual impact. The release notes note that games relying on global illumination can run on Nintendo Switch 2 at 60 fps, and the mode is supported on PC.

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