ARK Survival Ascended: UE 5.7 Engine Upgrade — 33% Performance Gain Explained
Studio Wildcard has announced that ARK: Survival Ascended will receive an upgrade to Unreal Engine 5.7, planned for late March to April 2026. This is significant for server admins: Wildcard claims approximately a 33% performance improvement on existing maps, driven primarily by new Nanite virtualized culling for foliage. This guide explains what changes, what stays the same, and how to prepare your server for the transition.
Timeline: The UE 5.7 upgrade is planned for late March / April 2026. As with all engine upgrades, there is risk of plugin and mod incompatibilities at launch. Monitor the official ARK forums for the exact patch date.
What Is Nanite Foliage Culling?
Nanite is Unreal Engine 5's virtualized geometry system. In previous UE5 versions, Nanite handled large static meshes (rocks, buildings) but foliage (trees, bushes, grass) was excluded — foliage used a separate, older rendering and culling system.
UE 5.7 extends Nanite to foliage, meaning dense forests and grass fields are now handled by the same efficient virtualized pipeline. For servers this matters because:
- The server doesn't render visuals, but it does run collision detection against world geometry including foliage
- Nanite foliage uses level-of-detail (LOD) streaming more aggressively, reducing the amount of geometry data the server needs to hold in memory for physics calculations
- World partition streaming (loading/unloading map chunks) becomes faster because Nanite foliage chunks are smaller and more granular
Expected Performance Improvements
| Area | Expected Improvement | Mechanism |
|---|---|---|
| Overall TPS (server tick rate) | ~33% improvement | Reduced collision mesh complexity for foliage zones |
| World streaming speed | Noticeably faster | Nanite foliage chunks load faster |
| Memory usage | Moderate reduction | Virtualized geometry replaces large pre-baked collision meshes |
| Player position replication | Unchanged | Network layer not affected by Nanite |
| Dino AI pathfinding | Slight improvement | Simplified nav-mesh generation in foliage-heavy biomes |
Which maps benefit most? Maps with dense foliage see the largest gains. Expect significant improvement on TheIsland, Fjordur, and Astraeos. Scorched Earth and Aberration (naturally sparser environments) will see smaller gains.
Maps and the 33% Estimate
The 33% figure is Wildcard's aggregate across all existing maps. Individual map performance gains will vary:
- TheIsland — Heavily forested with dense foliage everywhere; expect gains close to or exceeding 33%
- Aberration — Underground map with bioluminescent cave biomes; moderate gain (~20%) since much terrain is rocky, not foliage
- Scorched Earth — Desert environment; foliage is sparse so gains closer to ~15%
- Astraeos — Mixed environments; Pyranthos desert areas will gain less, forested ruins areas will gain more
- Future maps — Maps designed from the ground up for UE 5.7 Nanite foliage will see full benefit immediately
Impact on Server Hardware Requirements
The 33% performance improvement means you may be able to run larger player counts on existing hardware, or run the same player count more stably. Practically:
| Current Setup | After UE 5.7 Upgrade |
|---|---|
| 30 players, 16 GB RAM, 6-core CPU — running at 85% CPU | Same players at ~57% CPU — headroom to add 10–15 more players or add mods |
| 50 players causing TPS drops to 15 TPS | Same 50 players likely stabilize at 20+ TPS |
| Frequent RAM-related crashes on 12 GB server | Reduced memory footprint may resolve edge-case OOM issues |
Important caveat: Performance improvements from engine upgrades are never guaranteed to match pre-release estimates. Plan for 20–25% real-world improvement rather than the full 33% in case your specific map/mod combination sees less benefit. The upgrade may also introduce temporary regression bugs in the first patch or two.