Unreal Fest 2025: Highlights from Orlando

Unreal Fest is quickly becoming a must-attend event for anyone in the VP or game dev space. Hosted annually by Epic Games, it’s a conference dedicated to all things Unreal Engine, bringing together developers, artists, and technical professionals from around the world. The event features in-depth sessions, hands-on demos, and a massive expo hall showcasing the latest advancements in real-time 3D technology.

They recently decided to move the event to different cities each year instead of its previous location of New Orleans. Last year, it was in Seattle, my hometown, and this year, it was in Orlando, Florida. As a Seattleite just exiting the rainy season, I was excited for a week of sun and diving into Unreal Engine with fellow developers. However, Mother Nature had other ideas, and I arrived during a thunderstorm and never saw the sun. However, it was still hot, so I got the whole Orlando humidity experience. Thankfully, Epic puts on a fantastic conference filled with excellent sessions and a greatly expanded Expo Hall.

Opening Mixer

One thing that Unreal Fest provides is plenty of after-hours experiences. This starts on Monday night with a mixer on the show floor. Sessions didn’t begin until Tuesday, so the mixer provides an excellent opportunity to pick up your badge, walk the expo hall floor, and have drinks and appetizers with other attendees. Puget Systems had a booth this year, and this mixer was a great time for us. So many people came by the booth to say hi, rave about systems they have purchased from us, or just learn more about who we are and what we do. All around the hall, you could feel the excitement for what the week had in store.

Expo hall

I first attended Unreal Fest last year, but this year’s event was several times larger than the one in Seattle. Last year, there were only maybe four tables that Epic did not own. Everything else was Epic, highlighting different features of Unreal. This year, there were 10 small booths, a few bigger ones, including a large LED demo wall, and a whole motion capture area, as well as Rivian and Porsche showing off vehicles with infotainment systems powered by Unreal. There was also a “Developer Zone” where Epic devs were available for questions from anyone who walked by. The expo hall also served as the cafeteria, serving breakfast and lunch. Any time sessions were not going on, the expo hall was busy. Oh, they also had a couple of stations making freshly-baked cookies all day. 

I hope they keep growing the expo hall. While most people, myself included, go specifically for the sessions, it is great to see all the ways people use Unreal and highlight the growing economy developing around it. Every year, there are more and more tools supporting Unreal Engine users, as well as new hardware from computers to motion capture equipment. 

Key Note

The highlight of the show is always the opening Key Note. They started with a jaw-dropping trailer and technical walkthrough of the upcoming Witcher 4. This primarily showcased features in Unreal 4.6, which went live that day, but was also mixed in with features coming in 4.7 and later. As a former environment artist, this demo blew my mind. I am so excited to dive into the updates. I’ll cover the specifics of 5.6 in another article.

Another favorite moment from the keynote was having both Matt Workman and Cory Strassburger take the stage to show off features of Metahuman. These two are some of the pioneers of virtual production and have helped so many people get metahumans working. Having these two in the keynote really shows how far these tools have come, and how it is not just big studios that can make the most of them. 

Epic’s CEO, Tim Sweeney, took the stage to make some remarks. However, this year’s appearance was relatively brief, only 5 minutes out of the hour-and-a-half presentation. He mainly reiterated the other talking points. This is much less than in past years, but also this has been an excellent year for Epic. Fortnite and the Epic Game Store are back on iOS. Some fantastic games have shipped with Unreal 5. And Unreal 5.6 shows great maturity. He probably thought the engine speaks for itself.

Sessions

UnrealFest is first and foremost about sessions. I won’t go through every session I attended, but I did want to call out a few.

ICVFX

On the first day, Matthew Swanton of Pixomondo hosted a session titled “Standard Operating Procedures for Success in ICVFX.” Pixomondo is one of the biggest names in virtual production, with several studios globally and credits on some of the top movies and TV shows. The session provided a deep dive into best practices for in-camera visual effects (ICVFX), drawing from real-world lessons learned across several productions. Swanton shared insights on how careful planning, clear communication, and thorough previsualization can help avoid common pitfalls and ensure a smoother shoot. 

PCG

The following day, I attended a more technical session about using Procedural Content Generation (PCG) to create urban environments. Chris Murphy, Senior Technical Artist at Epic, hosted the session. He walked through setting up an urban environment in Unreal using PCG. For the most part, PCG has been used for more organic, natural environments. This session demonstrated everything from using splines to create roads, intersections, sidewalks, and buildings. Using these tools, artists could quickly set up city environments in a fraction of the time it would take to craft them by hand. PCG also provides a significant amount of control and allows for very granular modifications. It’s something I want to put into practice. I’ve attached the live stream below. This specific session starts at 1:50:00.

Performance Profiling

The third session I wanted to highlight was titled, “Technical Artist’s Guide to Profiling in Unreal Engine.” The speaker was Alyssa Reuter, Technical Art Director at Crystal Dynamics. This was a very in-depth look into the tools available in Unreal Engine used to track down performance bottlenecks and problem areas. This is a key role in the production pipeline in the game development space. Game engines are susceptible to minor performance demands. When attempting to render 60-100 frames every second, if an asset adds a few milliseconds to the frame, the game may be unable to hit that target. There is a lot in this area that virtual production could benefit from, as it’s a much different process than a typical rendering workflow.

Conclusion

Unreal Fest continues to prove why it’s one of the premier gatherings for developers, artists, and technologists working in real-time 3D. From the insightful sessions and inspiring keynote to the bustling expo floor and after-hours mixers, every part of the event reinforces how fast the Unreal ecosystem is growing.

What stood out most this year was just how broad and accessible the Unreal community has become. Whether you’re part of an AAA game studio, an indie developer experimenting in your spare time, or working in fields like virtual production, animation, or architecture, there’s something at Unreal Fest for you. Sessions covered everything from the latest in ICVFX workflows to cutting-edge game design. We saw how other industries use Unreal Engine, including automotive infotainment systems and NASA training exercises.

Even with the Orlando weather doing its best to dampen things, the creativity and momentum inside the conference center more than made up for it. One of the highlights for us at Puget Systems was getting to meet so many of our customers face-to-face—hearing how they use our workstations in their pipelines and learning more about the incredible projects they’re building with Unreal. We had a fantastic time at the booth and definitely hope to return next year. Wherever Unreal Fest lands, we’ll be there, ready to connect, share, and keep supporting this amazing community.