Welcome to CRYENGINE 5.5 Preview 5! As you know, work never stops on the development of the engine, and today’s update pushes things forward with 400+ improvements, including 7 months worth of rendering changes & fixes. We couldn’t have put this update together without the help of our community, so as ever, we’d like to thank everyone for all your feedback and suggestions. Keep it coming!

Accessing the 5.5.0 Preview 5 Release

CRYENGINE Preview versions are now available through the CRYENGINE Launcher.

Having logged into the CRYENGINE Launcher go to LIBRARY -> My Engines where your currently installed and available Engines are listed. From there Engines can be updated (installed).

GitHub

CRYENGINE Previews can still be obtained from GitHub as can full Sandbox Editor source code.

Preview Engine versions are also available from Github, however Sandbox Editor source code is only available via Github.

1. Go to: https://github.com/CRYTEK/CRYENGINE/releases/5.5.0_preview5
2. Download CRYENGINE_preview_5.5.0.298_pc.zip
3. Unzip it somewhere and open the directory “CRYENGINE_preview_5.5.0.298_pc”
4. Double click on InstallEngine.bat

For more information on getting started with the CRYENGINE source code from GitHub please visit our technical documentation on Building the Engine from Source Code.

Code Interface Changes

For more information, see the Important CRYENGINE 5.5 Data and Code Changes article.

If you are upgrading from CRYENGINE 5.4, please read this topic: Migrating from CRYENGINE 5.4 to CRYENGINE 5.5.

Known Issues

All Known Issues are Work in Progress. If you encounter those or similar problems please let us know, but be aware that we are already looking into it.

• RENDERER: Reflections are broken if a material is attached to a object. Can be tweaked with "r_ssreflsamples" and "r_ssrefldistance".
• CRASH: Game will crash on startup with Vulkan.
• CRASH: Legacy PFX can cause a crash shortly after being added to a level
• PARTICLE EDITOR: Changes to a particle effect in the new Particle Editor are not directly applied to the Particle Effect instances in the level (currently a level reload is necessary).
• CRASH: Occasionally the editor crashes if a particle effect is placed in the level and is opened in Particle Editor.
• DESIGNER TOOL: Objects may be invisible after levelload/chainload.
  Workaround: Enable, then disable e_permanentRenderObjects 0/1.

• C#: Using the CRYENGINE C# extension for Visual Studio 2017 to start the GameLauncher, Sandbox Editor or Server can cause an error when used in the latest version of Visual Studio 2017. More information and a fix for this issue can be found here.

Release Notes

As we have 400+ new changes, fixes and updates, including 200+ in the rendering department alone. Check out the full list on our Release Notes page on CRYENGINE Documentation.

Highlights:

• Updated to Wwise SDK v2017.2.6 build 6636.
• Updated to Fmod Studio 1.10.06.
• Updated Oculus spatializer plugin for Wwise 1.27.0.

• New: View dist ratio for clip volumes.
• New: Added feature light lens flare.
• New: Screenfader post-process effect.
• Fixed: Bug where m_fZoomDistanceSq would change during successive render passes and cause culling of attachments during skinning.
• Fixed: Map load causes collider component settings to change.
• Fixed: Crash when opening a certain Particle Effect.
• Fixed: Missing WaterDDN in vertex-shader.
• Fixed: Cubemap rendering.
• Fixed: SVOGI in combination with forward tiled.
• Fixed: Temporal AA jitters.
• Fixed: Clip volumes for fog volumes
• Fixed: Emitters not activating properly (muzzle flashes etc.).
• Fixed: C# solution not being generated for non-C# projects in the Sandbox Editor (when the first C# file is added).
• Fixed: Crash in obtaining help info in python module after VS 2017.7 compilation. Autocomplete data is generated by pythoneditor.generate_pythoneditor_autocomplete_files.
• Fixed: .level.cryasset file is not generated after upgrading levels from .cry to .level.
• Fixed: Not enough occlusion if offline voxelization for GI is used.

Reminder: This is an experimental release and features are subject to changes, bugs, and gremlins, as you’d expect with a beta production. Please back up your projects before working with any of our latest builds to make sure your core project is safe. If you find an issue please reach out to us via the collective CRYENGINE 5.5 Build Feedback Thread on the official forum or report issues via GitHub Issue Reporter.

How to report Crashes: In case of engine crashes, please use the Crash Reporter in the launcher when it pops up and don't forget to attach all reports! We hope you enjoy the build and we look forward to seeing what you can do with it. For guides on how to best submit an issue or if you need to contact customer support, please review the 'How to contact CRYENGINE Official Support Channels' landing thread on the forum.

- Your CRYENGINE Team