Engine Update Release Notes: July 15th, 2026

ENGINE UPDATE RELEASE NOTES: July 15th, 2026

General

• Fix tooltip flicker. Tooltip flicker fixed when opening popovers.

Engine

• Pawn layered hierarchy. Pawn → MovementPawn → GameplayPawn → CharacterPawn. If you subclassed Pawn directly for gameplay characters, move to CharacterPawn (or whichever layer matches how much built-in movement/gameplay behavior you need). (Breaking Change)
• PlayerController simplified. PlayerController is now a minimal base for identity and possession only. Input handling (WASD/mouse/gamepad) has moved to the new DefaultPlayerController. If you relied on PlayerController for input, switch to DefaultPlayerController or implement your own controller on top of the new Controller base class. (Breaking Change)
• Interval-based ticking. TickManager supports interval-based ticking, so actors and scene components can run logic on a fixed interval instead of every frame.
• waitForLocalPlayerController(). New ClientNetWorld method resolves once the local player's Pawn is guaranteed to have spawned, removing a class of race conditions when reacting to connection setup.
• Smoothed connection stats. Multiplayer connection stats now include EMA-smoothed round-trip time and jitter (smoothedRttMs, rttJitterMs) on ConnectionStatsSnapshot/NetStats, also shown in the in-game debug overlay.
• Improved top-down panning. TopDownMovementComponent got improved screen panning that works correctly across different yaw/pitch camera orientations, plus new pan/zoom controls.
• Fix physics timestep handling. Fixed physics fixed-timestep/substepping and KinematicVelocityBased velocity handling.
• Fix missing connection options. NetClientConnectOptions was missing options needed for some connection setups; added.
• Fix duplicate spawn-packet retries. Duplicate server spawn-packet retries no longer re-construct an already-live client actor.
• Fix shadow-access crash. Fixed a crash accessing a light's shadow before the shadow was initialized.

Asset Compiler

• Build-time texture advisories. Advisories flag texture issues (auto-downscaled oversized textures, textures that can't be block-compressed) so problems surface at build time instead of at runtime.
• Vendored MP3 audio baking. MP3 audio baking during builds now uses a vendored ffmpeg, so no system ffmpeg install is required. Configurable from Project Settings.

Prefab Editor

• Dedicated scene world. Prefabs now edit in a dedicated scene world for more reliable viewport behavior and tooling support.

Viewport

• Pin camera preview. Pin the camera preview open so it stays visible when you deselect the camera.

Asset Browser

• Duplicate from context menu. Duplicate assets from the right-click context menu; textures with size or compression issues show a severity-colored warning badge and toast.
• Folder tree sync. Folder tree stays in sync when navigating or selecting folders in the grid.
• Fix context-menu misfire. Right-click no longer misfires an unrelated context-menu action.

Desktop App

• GPU Diagnostics dialog. New dialog surfaces vendor, renderer, and device info (copyable), plus a launch flag to work around GPU/rendering startup issues.
• Startup and title bar fixes. Title bar menu and window controls reliably appear at startup; title bar project name no longer overlaps action buttons; fixed a startup crash on the dashboard (including one specific to production builds); macOS installer (.dmg) downloads work correctly again.

Notifications

• Toast notifications and history panel. New toast notifications plus a per-project notification history panel (bell icon, filters, mute).

Property Editor

• Fix broken camera property. Removed a broken camera property that could cause issues when edited.