Roadmaps for the next two releases of CryEngine have been published on their official website. CryEngine 5.6 is expected to launch this summer. CryEngine 5.7 is expected to launch next Spring (2020). The biggest changes in CryEngine 5.6 seem to be centered on optimizations. The points that stand out involve CPU, memory, and compilation performance. They will also update to the recently released Qt 5.12 framework, keeping them on the latest LTS branch.
CryEngine 5.7 is a bit bigger. They expect to have:
- Full DX12 and Vulkan support in the Sandbox editor
- Updated Job System
- Refactored Entity Components
- Visual Scripting updates
- C++17 support
- Better dynamic instancing
- Area lights
- More back-end improvements (messaging, reflection, etc.)
It will still be a while before any of these changes show up in any non-trivial games based on CryEngine. Also, some of these features, such as area lights, have been available in competitors for a long time. Still, it’s good to have another option.
Speaking of options, this would be a good time to bump our post last year that highlighted various game engines and their licensing structures. Since version 5.5, Crytek demands a 5% royalty after $5000 of revenue in a year. Our table compares this against Unity, Unreal Engine 4, Unigine, Godot, Lumberyard, Unigine, and CryEngine’s old license.
