Lumen is really nice as long as you never hope to have >60fps and don't want open worlds.
The architecture of it is just fundamentally not compatible with the majority of AAA games, especially open world or esports ones.
It's not that Epic are stupid it's that they're "optimising" in all directions and it sometimes causes issues. -- marketing advertises features that are not fit for the purpose they're being marketed for. Lumen is excellent for small games that aren't so CPU heavy or alternatively for non-realtime renders such as scene generation VFX.
Unreal itself is extremely bound to single-core CPU performance, so the idea of adding extra weight to the main render thread (which is basically the only thread) is unconscionable and was a deeply unwise decision.
The game just needed a more likeable protagonist and a less crowded release window, but I'm sure the takeaway for EA execs is that it shouldn't have been a new IP...
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/metahuman
Pretty amazing. Although I don't know if I even need characters this real in my games. At some point it becomes too much like real life and kind of boring? I think I like the fantasy aspect of games too much and I like to escape.
https://medium.com/locodrome/unreal-filmmaking-building-a-st...
I haven’t studied Unreal enough to say for sure, but I think those tools can be a boon if they enable a less technical developer to do things that normally took a lot more time.