Unreal Engine 5 was recently released with many amazing, ground-breaking features, but it is not the only game engine that can provide realistic graphics in the gaming market. Godot is one of the market’s other players who is evolving alongside the gaming industry. Godot is about to release its new version, Godot 4, which will also include many features that will help you decide which one is best for your next game.
So, in this article, I compared two modern game engines (Unreal Engine 5 vs Godot 4) against each other, taking many factors into account to help us decide which is better for you.
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Ease of Use
This is a difficult question to answer because both engines are still new but not significantly different from previous versions, but both have many major changes that improve the workflow, so ui and workflow wise both are good, but Godot may feel easier for many people workflow wise, and ui may appear better in Unreal, but it depends on individual to individual.
Making 2D games is easier in Godot, but starting with 3D in Unreal may be easier because it is a 3D first engine.
Winner:- Godot
Graphics
This one is quite clear but also quite close. In Unreal Engine 5, Lumen was introduced, and it is basically a dynamic global illumination system, and also in Godot 4, SDFGI was introduced, which is also a global illumination system.
Despite having many differences between both lighting systems, both look extremely good and also quite realistic, but from demos I’ve seen, Unreal Engine 5’s lumen looks better, and it may be because Godot 4’s SDFGI is still under development, so it may look better in the future, but right now it may be close, but Unreal is simply better.
But the thing that became a game changer for Unreal is Nanite. Nanite is Unreal Engine 5’s virtualized geometry system which uses a new internal mesh format and rendering technology to render pixel-scale detail and high object counts. It intelligently does work on only the details that can be perceived and no more. Nanite’s data format is also highly compressed and supports fine-grained streaming with an automatic level of detail. This means you can have a huge open world with an insane level of detail without worrying about performance, and this is where I think the Unreal Engine is a game changer in the gaming world.
Winner:- Unreal Engine 5
Community
Both engines are well-known in the game development community, so it’s no surprise that they have large user bases. Let’s take a look at how many people follow each subreddit: The Godot subreddit has 85.5k members, while the Unreal Engine subreddit has 165k.
I realise that these figures don’t say much. But it’s still a reasonable comparison: the unreal community has more people, which means there are more questions and, more importantly, more answers. Of course, there will be a larger pool of information.
Winner:- Unreal Engine 5
Coding
Both engines have this type of visual code editor (Blueprint in Unreal Engine 5 and visual script in Godot 4). However, Unreal’s Blueprint outperforms Godot’s visual script in every way.
The main programming language for Unreal is C++, and the main programming language for Godot is GD Script, which is a python-like language. C++, in my opinion, has a higher learning curve than Godot and GD Script, but it is easier to learn and write, and it has well-documented documentation.
So, if you want a simpler language, Godot is preferable, but if you want a popular language, Unreal is simply superior.
Winner:- Both
