Perfectly Optimized

Perfectly Optimized is an empty UE5 starter template. It's made to give a clean slate to any project that wants to increase performance for low-end devices.

While UE5’s default config wants Lumen (Ray Traced Global Illumination) and of nanite. For some basic lowpoly/stylized games, you most likely don't need all that overhead.

This template changes the UE5 config in order to disable those features and give low GPU cost. It still enables deferred rendering by default to allow Realtime lighting (because most people use it). But it still allows you to switch to forward rendering for VR and Stylized Games. Anyways, below is a list of major changes. You can see the All changes in Detailed Documentation with Benchmarks on Github

Major Performance Changes

• Global Illumination: Lumen is disabled. Baked lightmaps replace it. Movable lights give direct light and shadows only.

• Reflections: Lumen reflections are disabled. Reflection captures and the sky light are used instead. Screen Space Reflections can be re-enabled.

• Nanite: Disabled. Traditional static mesh LODs are used.

• Virtual Shadow Maps: Disabled. Cascaded shadow maps are used. Stationary lights use baked distance field shadows.

• Ray Tracing: Disabled. This reduces shader count and removes per-mesh acceleration structures. GPU Lightmass requires it, so CPU Lightmass is used instead.

• Anti-Aliasing: TSR is replaced with FXAA, which is nearly free. Switch to TAA for less shimmering.
  

Intended Use Cases

• Developers targeting older PCs and integrated GPUs

• Prototypes where consistent performance is needed

• Indie projects needing a lightweight baseline

• People wanting to ship stylized games, VR or lowpoly projects using UE5

Check the Github for the documentation and guides for migration and usage.