Category: Epic Games

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The VR Job Hub: Vive, Oculus, Epic Games and More

The virtual reality (VR) ball keeps rolling, gaining momentum this week as both HTC Vive and Oculus VR are looking to take on new hires in the UK. Joining them on this week’s VR Job Hub are high profile developers Epic Games and new positions at VR specialist developers, nDreams.

Below you can find the position a link connecting you with an opportunity to apply for each of the roles listed.
View the new listings below for more information:

Location Company Role Link
Slough, UK HTC Vive Marketing Coordinator, Viveport for Vive VR Click here to apply
London, UK Oculus VR Product Manager, Social VR Click here to apply
Farnborough, UK nDreams Ltd. Real-time VFX Artist – Freelance in-house contract, VR Click here to apply
Farnborough, UK nDreams Ltd. 3D Artist – Freelance in-house contract, VR Click here to apply
Guildford, UK Epic Games Technical Artist, UE Enterprise Support Click here to apply
Guildford, UK Epic Games Rendering Programmer – Unreal Engine Click here to apply

 

As ever, you can check last week’s edition of the VR Job Hub for further job listings. If you are an employer looking for someone to fill a role in a VR, AR or other related areas in the industry and want that position to be featured on next week’s VR Job Hub, please send details to either pgraham@vrfocus.com or keva@vrfocus.com.

Check back with VRFocus next Sunday at 3PM BST and every Sunday for the latest roles in the VR industry.

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Epic Games and NVIDIA are working on Enterprise-Grade Platform for VR

Unreal Engine creator Epic Games and NVIDIA, two of the most prominent companies advancing virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology have announced work on an enterprise-grade solutions to help application developers create better, more immersive experiences.

As businesses adopt VR the two companies want to make this process easier. So they’ve collaborated, with Epic Games integrating NVIDIA Quadro professional GPUs into the test suite for Unreal Engine 4, so that NVIDIA technologies combine seamlessly into developers workflows.

NVIDIA Quadro image 1

“With our expanding focus on industries outside of games, we’ve aligned ourselves ever more closely with NVIDIA to offer an enterprise-grade experience,” said Marc Petit, general manager of the Unreal Engine Enterprise business. “NVIDIA Quadro professional GPUs empower artists, designers and content creators who need to work unencumbered with the largest 3D models and datasets, tackle complex visualization challenges, and deliver highly immersive VR experiences. By combining NVIDIA hardware with Unreal Engine, developers are ensured excellent performance and productivity.”

This effort can already be seen in Epic’s collaboration with GM and The Mill on project, The Human Race. A real-time short film and mixed reality (MR) experience which was built using NVIDIA Quadro pro graphics, it features a configurable Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 and the Chevrolet FNR self-driving concept car.

“As the market for VR and AR content expands, professional developers in industries such as automotive, architecture, healthcare and others are using Unreal Engine to create amazing immersive experiences,” added Bob Pette, vice president of Professional Visualization at NVIDIA. “Unreal, from version 4.16, is the first real-time toolset to meet NVIDIA Quadro partner standards. Our combined solution provides leaders in these markets the reliability and performance they require for the optimum VR experience.”

As further details on the collaboration are released, VRFocus will keep you updated.

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Epic Games Begin Roll out of Unreal Engine 4.18 Preview 1

Continuing its regular roll outs of updates for Unreal Engine 4, Epic Games has now made the first preview available for version 4.18, which includes support for iOS 11 and augmented reality (AR).

When Apple unveiled ARKit back in June Epic Games added early access support through a GitHub download link, with Unreal Engine 4.18 Preview 1 that support is now featured directly in the videogame engine rather than externally. This also goes for Google’s ARCore which had a similar early access release before proper integration.

ARCore Tinman

Detailing the update on the Unreal Engine forum, the studio states: “We’ve released the first portion of our unification of the base functionality between Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore developer preview. We’ll continue to grow and mature these APIs, but in the beginning, passthrough cameras and camera control and synching have been unified, and are built on top of our new shared XR engine layer.”

The Unified XR Engine Layer is the second major inclusion for 4.18 Preview 1. “We’ve created a shared XR layer in the engine to support VR and AR Systems so that all existing system plugins now build upon the default camera implementation for both Camera Components and camera passthrough view,” explains the studio. “This not only makes behavior more consistent between VR and AR platforms, but should help simplify hardware developers adding support for their platforms to UE4.

As with any preview release Epic Games always notes that: “Developers should not convert their projects for active development on preview releases,” as these releases aren’t fully quality tested like the final version.

AR has certainly had a boost with the roll out of ARKit and ARCore, especially with iOS 11 recently launching so that consumers can start playing the latest AR titles on their iPhones and iPads. Unreal Engine rival Unity announced full support yesterday for Apple’s operating system, so expect plenty more content to be arriving in the months to come.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of Unreal Engine, reporting back with the latest updates.

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Epic Games Comes to Oculus Connect 4

Oculus are bringing back their successful annual virtual reality (VR) conference this year with Oculus Connect 4, where many industry professionals will be appearing to offer insights, speculation and support to attendees. As with previous years, Epic Games are planning to be in attendance.

Epic Games are the creators of Unreal Engine, the current version of which, Unreal Engine 4, forms the underpinnings of some of the biggest and most successful VR titles currently available, such as EVE: Valkyrie and Robo Recall.

The team from Epic Games will be in attendance at Oculus Connect 4 to offer answers to technical questions during their ‘office hours’ where developers and engineers can ask for help to get through obstacles encountered in projects using Unreal Engine 4.

Nick Whiting, Epic Games’ Technical Director of AR and VR will be giving an in-depth look at first-person shooter for the Oculus Rift, Robo Recall, examining the successes and failures of the title and the performance of Unreal Engine 4.

Robo-Recall-Keyart-&-Title

Also hosted by Epic Games at the event will be the Developer Highlight: Future Lighthouse, where the creator of VR storytelling experience MELITA, who will analyse the current state of the VR industry and community and discuss how best to move forward.

Other events planned for Oculus Connect 4 include a talk on VR Esports by Christopher McKelvy, a workshop of Social VR and a live demonstration on how to capture mixed reality experiences. Further information can be found at the official Oculus Connect 4 website.

VRFocus will continue to bring you news from Oculus Connect 4 and other VR events.

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Epic Games Talk VR At Austin Game Conference

More than 100 guest speakers will be addressing the audience at the Austin Game Conference, speaking on various aspects of the videogame industry. One of the featured speakers will be representatives from Epic Games, creators of Unreal Engine, one of the most popular engines for creating virtual reality (VR) experiences.

Joe Kreiner of Epic Games will be participating in the panel ‘How Best to Work With A Publisher’, which is due to take place on 21st September at 4:30pm. Also on the panel will be VP of Publishing at Aspyr Media Elizabeth Howard, Gordon Walton of Craft Entertainment, Jared Yaeger of FoxNext Games and Steve Escalalnte of Versus Evil.

“Austin is an important hub for the gaming industry and Epic is proud to support the Austin Game Conference yet again in 2017,” said Kreiner. “By sharing our collective wisdom and war stories, this panel will deliver important takeaways on establishing proper expectations for publishing partnerships while exploring what can go wrong with publisher deals and how to minimize those risks.”

Epic Games logo

For attendees who are interested in Epic Games’ VR and AR projects, Partnership Manager for VR and AR Chance Ivey will also be in attendance at the Epic Games booth along with Community Manager Amanda Bott and Unreal Engine Developer Relations Tech Artist Zak Parrish who will be offering live demonstrations and discussions.

The Austin Game Conference will take place on 21st-22nd September at the Austin Convention Centre. Further information can be found on the official website.

VRFocus will continue to report on VR-related events.

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Epic Games Announce Unreal Engine 4 Support for ARCore

Today the push for augmented reality (AR) advancement took another step with Google announcing ARCore, its version of Apple’s ARKit which released a short while back. Just like its rival, Google has ensured support from some of the biggest middleware companies, with Epic Games and Unreal Engine 4 officially supporting ARCore.

With the launch of ARCore’s preview today, developers will now be able to start creating AR experiences millions of Android users across the world. And for those who’re used to Unreal Engine, that means the knowledge they already have can now be utilised.

ARCore Tinman

While today’s release is merely an early access look at ARCore, downloaded through GitHub, when Epic Games release Unreal Engine 4.18 in mid-October, the update will include deeper support for the AR software.

“Augmented reality is the next step in the evolution of the smartphone, and Unreal Engine developers are already hard at work on great AR experiences. ARCore will help further drive AR adoption by empowering developers to build and ship cross-platform AR experiences. We encourage the Unreal community to check out today’s early access Unreal Engine 4 support for ARCore on GitHub as well as the preview coming in Unreal Engine 4.18,” said Mark Rein, Co-Founder and Vice President, Epic Games in a statement.

Today’s ARCore SDK release supports the Google Pixel, Pixel XL, and the Samsung Galaxy S8 running Android 7.0 Nougat and above. By mid-October expect that to have been expanded.

As Epic Games release further details about Unreal Engine’s ARCore support, VRFocus will let you know.

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It’s all in the Feet as 3dRudder Allows Unreal Engine 4 VR Editor Navigation

A few days ago French controller company 3dRudder introduced a new update adding 2-key mapping to its peripheral, thus enabling gamers whether on standard monitors or in virtual reality (VR) to add two key inputs to any direction. Now it’s the turn of developers, with 3dRudder releasing a plugin for Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4 VR Editor, enabling them to move around their virtual worlds.

As developers tend to spend a significant amount of time seated at their desks building awesome videogames, if they use UE4’s immersive editor then the foot-powered VR motion controller aims to aid navigation by making it simpler and smoother.

Rather than having to use the standard VR inputs to teleport or traverse scenes, the foot controller can be used, freeing up the motion controllers for other work such as movement of objects, tweaking designs, or just because you want to sit back, relax and admire your work by flying all over the place.

3dRudder has been ensuring its controller supports as much software as possible whilst being easy to use. Earlier this year a wireless version was unveiled, whilst a few weeks after the launch of Robo Recall, a locomotion mod was released.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of 3dRudder, reporting back with the latest updates.