18,000 Characters in Real Time on Unreal Engine 5

Engaging video games with massive crowds is a huge challenge for every developer. Even the most powerful computers struggle when thousands of characters appear at the same time.
But a developer known as Animatolog found an ingenious way to overcome this obstacle, making 18,000 characters appear in real time on Unreal Engine 5 without a significant drop in performance.

An Effective Innovation

This experiment was created for their game, Trakonius, an action-roguelike set in gladiatorial arenas.
The developer combined several clever techniques to manage such a large crowd, using Unreal Engine's tools in unexpected ways to create a realistic and dynamic effect while maintaining high gameplay fluidity.

Optimal Performance

Despite thousands of animated characters on the screen, the tests conducted by the developer showed minimal performance drop even on mid-range graphics cards.
This proves that you don't need to sacrifice quality and scale to create realistic and engaging game worlds.
Thanks to innovative solutions like this, we can expect to see future games with huge, vibrant crowds that will make our gaming experiences even more immersive.

You can find the link to the Reddit post here