Unreal Engine 5.9 preview adds Unreal Canvas, WASM export and expanded MCP

Epic Games has released a preview of Unreal Engine 5.9, according to GameFromScratch. The site says the preview is very early and less polished than previous preview releases, and that it mainly supports the upcoming Epic AI Megajam.

GameFromScratch also describes the release as one in which Epic is testing and refining AI agent driven development of Unreal Engine itself. It says the version was predominantly written by AI, and that most of the highlight features are aimed at AI use as well.

WebAssembly is back as an export target. GameFromScratch notes that WASM was abandoned in Unreal Engine 4.x. Epic has now ported it to UE 5.9 using the old code base and AI agents, as an experimental feature.

Unreal Canvas is a shared workspace where people and AI agents create and refine content. It includes hooks to several Gen-AI services for images, videos and 3D models.

Unreal MCP now launches automatically with the editor and is said to deliver more reliable connections. Its toolsets expand to cover rendering, source control, profiling, debugging, gameplay testing, geometry, audio, UI and level creation.

Python scripting gets expanded APIs covering audio, MetaSounds, modeling, physics, Niagara, materials, PCG, networking and UI. GameFromScratch adds that several other features are slated for 5.9 in the Unreal Development Roadmap, but it is unclear how many are in this early preview. The site links to the 5.9 release notes.