Augmented & Virtual Reality Confabulation
What Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality developers are talking about
'State of Decay 2,' the followup to the 2013's 'State of Decay,' is on track to launch later this year on the Xbox One and PC. From co-op to a more expansive Trumbull County, here's everything we know so far.
The post ‘State of Decay 2’: Here’s everything we know so far appeared first on Digital Trends.
As has been Epic Games’ style for many years, Robo Recall – built on the company’s Unreal Engine 4 – allows you to change the original game via the engine’s editor, giving you the tools you need to mod the title to your heart’s content.
The slickly designed and expertly executed first person VR shooter Robo Recall is an interesting prospect for Epic Games, the developers behind the title. As a title funded by Oculus Studios, the studio had an opportunity to build a title they evidently wanted to make, but more than that – it also allowed them an opportunity to hone performance and visual fidelity within UE4 for VR projects, with their improved forward renderer a prime example. But the final bonus for Epic may be a crafty back door induction to Unreal Engine via the tantalising prospect of modding Robo Recall itself.
Epic Games have launched a tutorial which walks anyone interested through the steps needed to mod the title, which of course requires Unreal Engine. It’s a clever way to introduce those who may never have considered themselves programmers to take a look at, and play with the same toolset used by triple-A developers in the games industry. And as its technically possible to design and build games (VR or otherwise) within UE4’s environment without writing a line of code (at least in theory), perhaps some might decide to grow beyond the ‘simple’ first mod onto considering building full games.
All that aside, before you start, you’ll need a healthy amount of free disk space and an Epic Games user account in order to access all the Unreal Engine and the required content. The instructions then walk you through the basics of UE4 components, Level designer how to use the Blueprints visual scripting system. You’re then set to launch into creating your first new mod, and the guide starts with an example for creating customised weaponry with its own unique design before moving on to testing and releasing.
This isn’t low level programming, the vast majority of the work is aided by UE4’s GUI, but some may still find this in itself a little daunting at first. But if you manage to deploy your first mod, you can launch the game and see the results of your hard work almost immediately.
It’s a great way for those who’ve been itching to get creative with their gaming hobby for a while, and with this tutorial you may even gain skills that lead to other interest or even a new career. Check out the full tutorial over at the Unreal Engine site here.
The post Epic Games Shows You How to Create Your First ‘Robo Recall’ Mod appeared first on Road to VR.
VR video games are some of the most immersive, visceral experiences to date. Travelling to fantastic worlds, going brain-to-rotting-noggin’ with zombie hordes and throwing coffee mugs at floating sentient CRTs has never felt so real. But games are just the start of where VR and AR are heading, and honestly, most likely will not be either platform’s primary function in the future.
Enhanced reality devices – especially AR — will be ubiquitous in another decade or so, and used in nearly every aspect of our lives and in nearly every industry, from automotive to medical care, education to neuroscience, engineering to shopping. We’re on the cusp of a technological evolution, and while games will be driving the early experiences, they won’t be the predominant use for very long.
Of course, all of the various applications, programs and tools will require a base engine for creation, and that’s where Epic Games – and specifically its Unreal Engine – comes in. We had a chance to meet with Epic’s CEO and Founder Tim Sweeney to get his take on where he thinks VR and AR are heading and what Unreal Engine VR means for the plethora of non-gaming industries.
“VR and augmented reality are going to be the most visually-demanding platforms ever,” says Sweeney. “Unreal Engine was brought up in the days of PCs with big monitors and console games on your television, and we’ve had kind of a step back from pushing visual fidelity on mobile platforms. When you have a screen that only takes up 20% of your field of view on a mobile device, you don’t want world-class, photorealistic, high-detail graphics because it’s hard to see all the little details. You want stylized imagery. But now we’ve gone to these VR platforms and AR, your brain expects you’re going to see realistic objects, and your brain is very sensitive to anything that’s wrong.
“The ways architects and automotive companies will use VR is really healthy for us for our engine direction. In a game, whenever the engine fell short of achieving realism one area we could always fake it with some stylization, but if you have to recreate a realistic object, you can’t cheat, you have to actually do the hard work.
“Creative applications like Oculus Medium, Tilt Brush and Ghost Paint are exposing artistry to computer users that’s much more visceral than ever before. It’s a somewhat unnatural experience to sit down in Photoshop or 3D Studio Max or even Unity or Unreal and build 3D objects with a mouse and keyboard because the actions you’re doing with your hands don’t map very clearly to the actual actions in the world. In VR, it’s you reaching out and doing things with your hands the exact same way it works in the real world, so anyone who has ever painted knows how to paint in VR, and that’s a really empowering phenomena, and completely different than human interaction in the past. Just like Minecraft enabled 50 million people to become 3D content creators, I think there will be hundreds of millions of computer content creators with augmented reality and VR makes that completely accessible to people.
“Because we’ve now made Unreal Engine ubiquitous — anybody can go to the website and download the full toolset and get started on projects without any commitment, without talking to any human and without any negotiation — a variety of companies are downloading it and using it and then talking to us and showing us their projects. They’re doing some amazing things.
“We’re already about two years into that revolution of adoption of Unreal Engine by these industrial companies, and we’re seeing them making real-time engines — and especially Unreal — a much-more pervasive part of their entire production and company pipelines.
“The automotive industries are leading adopters; they’re using real-time engine tech for everything from design visualization all the way up to dealer showrooms so you can configure a car photo-realistically and see exactly what all of the millions of permutations of custom options look like in a way that’s just not possible with physical inventory.
“Right now your Amazon shopping experience involves looking at a lot of low-resolution JPEGs of products. All of those models are going to be digital in the future; they’re going to be high-fidelity and you’ll be able to preview them in a web browser or in VR and AR. You’ll be able to scale them, scan your room and place them in your environment and see if the couch you’re looking at or the painting looks good before you buy it. And then you’ll be able to customize all of these products, because once you’re able to see all of the different options, customization will be much more ubiquitous than using some bizarre user interface on the web. Products will be much more dynamic in the future, and technology like 3D printing is going to make manufacturing much more flexible than it has in the past.
“On the professional side, I’ve been blown away with the amount of progress we’ve been able to make with the VR Unreal Editor. We exposed the full editor user interface as if you have this iPad that you can bring up at any time and bring up objects in a very intuitive way. I think it’s going to be a very empowering technology for professional content creation of all sorts. Car makers are going to be designing cars by walking around in empty rooms and tweaking virtual objects until they’re ready to build them. They’ll experience that with other designers and have product reviews and have multidisciplinary collaboration — it’s going to be awesome!”
Tagged with: automotive, GDC, shopping, Tim Sweeney, unreal engine 4
Epic Games continues to expand the reach of video game technology by partnering with Chevrolet on a new project that uses augmented reality to transform a custom Blackbird vehicle into any car. In addition, that same Unreal Engine 4 technology drives a new Chevy car customizer.
The post Chevy’s augmented reality test drive puts you behind the wheel of your dream car appeared first on Digital Trends.
Everyone in the VR industry can envision a world in the next 10 years that’s radically changed by virtual reality. From healthcare, education, social, training, cinema, gaming, and more, VR has a lot of Killer Use-cases. But it seems most of the industry is in agreement that the Killer App—a single, platform-defining piece of software that compels buyers—has not yet arrived. Epic’s Nick Whiting weighs in on how we might come to find it.
Every day this week leading up to the 2017 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, we’re featuring insights on the hunt for the killer app from virtual reality’s leading companies. Today we hear from Nick Whiting, Technical Director of VR & AR at Epic Games.
Nick Whiting
Whiting oversees the development of the award-winning Unreal Engine 4’s virtual reality efforts. In addition to shipping working on Robo Recall, Bullet Train, Thief in the Shadows, Showdown, and Couch Knights for VR platforms, he has also helped shipped titles in the blockbuster Gears of War series, including Gears of War 3 and Gears of War: Judgment.
Road to VR:
What traits do you think VR’s Killer App needs to have?
Whiting:
To me, the Killer App has to be something that uniquely justifies the medium. It needs to be an app that brings people into the VR ecosystem because there simply isn’t another way to get the same experience in any other way. That’s the defining characteristic!
Right now, we’re still very early in VR. As with other mediums, we’re in a period that is largely comprised of imitation of other media. For VR games, we’re largely imitating the canon of 3D games that’s been developing since the ’90s. For entertainment, we’re largely using the same techniques of framing and timing from film, but adapted a little bit to make it feel better in VR.
This isn’t anything new! You can see the same pattern in early film, which were largely imitations and recordings of stage plays or common events. It’s easy to forget that the grammar of cinematography that we know today took decades to develop into what we know of as film today! The same was true with games, which imitated sports, comics, and movies for many years before they really started breaking new ground.
This wave of consumer VR has only really been around for a little over a year now, so I think we still have a little bit of time to go before we develop those ideas that are unique to the medium. I don’t know what they will specifically be, but I think we can hazard a guess based on the strengths.
Experiences out there right now, if we’re honest with ourselves, largely rely on the novelty of the experience of the hardware. As we all know, it’s magical the first time you put on a headset and can look around! However, without compelling content, that novelty wears off, and those experiences don’t seem quite as compelling. To make something with staying power, we need to identify what makes the medium unique, and figure out how to leverage that.
To me, the most important feature of VR is what I like to call “immersive interaction.” The idea is similar to presence, but centers more around the fact that unlike any other medium, you’re physically represented in the world, as well as your direct actions. You can not only look around, but reach out and grab things in a way that a game with its pre-baked animations can’t really match. You’re part of the action, and that builds the magical sense of presence. Because of that, I believe that the killer app must include interaction with motion controllers. It takes the immersive visuals of VR, and adds immersive interaction, which truly lets you be internalized as part of another world.
I think another very powerful extension of this is the social aspect. Social experiences in VR are so compelling because we track real human motion. So, if I nod at you, all the parts of your brain that are trained to recognize that motion do, and you feel the presence of another human in a shared space. That’s something 2D video can’t match, and something uniquely powerful for the medium. Multiple people sharing the same virtual space with such intimacy can’t be replicated without VR. As tracking technology improves, this could truly be something that is revolutionary.
Road to VR:
If you had to make a bet, which sector of VR would you predict as the place where the first Killer App emerges?
Whiting:
Depending on how you define it, the “killer app” might already be here for enterprise. While it doesn’t move tons of headsets, or have the flash of entertainment applications, we’re already starting to see huge wins in terms of savings and cost reduction in enterprise applications, which is causing steady growth for VR usage.
A simple example is in the architecture and construction industries. When a client orders a multi-million dollar building, the architect has to do his best to give the client an idea of what the finished product will be like, years before it’s even built. While renderings and previsualization can give you a great sense of the style and aesthetics of a building, it is distinctly lacking in some of the “human factors” of how the space feels. Because of this, large-scale projects often spend large amounts of money after construction has begun to redesign and redo work once the client has been able to physically stand in a space. Savvy builders and architects have realized that this can be greatly reduced through putting the client in a VR mockup of the space, which allows them to get a better feeling for the final product, and make those changes while it’s still on paper, rather than already half-built!
You can easily expand that to many other areas of engineering and design, where ideas and concepts have to go through separate teams in order to bring a product to fruition. Being able to have everyone visualize a product while it’s still in early planning helps ensure that everything from design to construction to training can be accomplished before any fabrication has begun. That’s a huge cost and time savings, and given VR’s proliferation in those industries, I think that deserves to be called a Killer App.
Road to VR:
Do you think VR’s Killer App will launch in 2017?
Whiting:
Of course, because Robo Recall launches Q1 2017! In reality though, I think that 2017 is somewhat optimistic for a killer app. Great content, yes. But, killer apps are built on the shoulders of countless lessons learned from the apps that came before them. While we’re starting to see a lot of great content trickle out (the mainstream market attention of Resident Evil 7 and Rez Infinite are great indicators), you have to remember that great content generally takes two or three years to develop.
It was only last year that consumer headsets were first widely commercially available, and it was only a few months before that when the big players announced release dates and pricing. Because of that, many of the traditional funding vehicles that create killer content didn’t kick in until a little over a year ago. That means many projects that took that initial round of funding still have about a year to go before they see the light of day. Because of that, I think 2018 is going to be the year where we start seeing a wider variety of great content from a variety of developers, and hopefully our killer app is somewhere in that batch.
The post On the Hunt for VR’s Killer App with Epic Games’ Technical Director of VR & AR, Nick Whiting appeared first on Road to VR.
This Epic Games has released the latest iteration of its popular videogame development software Unreal Engine 4.15.
The last version was only released in November 2016, and since then the studio has been pumping out the preview builds, adding experimental new features whilst ironing out the bugs and glitches. Unreal Engine 4.15 continues Epic’s support of virtual reality (VR), finalising additions like support for PlayStation VR’s Aim controller along with general VR Editor improvements.
Epic’s updated the Quick Menu and Radial Menu in the VR Editor, improving usability and functionality whilst giving them a new look. A new Number Pad UI has been added allowing developers to quickly enter numbers from zero to nine as well as negative and decimal values in text fields
An experimental addition to 4.15 comes in the form of Monoscopic Far Field Rendering which provides a performance boost by only rendering distant objects once. As it is experimental for the moment Monoscopic Far Field Rendering is only supported on mobile platforms for now.
For the full list of features head to the Unreal Engine blog for a concise rundown including support for Nintendo Switch. VRFocus will continue its coverage of Unreal Engine, reporting back with the latest updates.
New: Updated the GoogleVR SDK to version 1.01.
New: Exposed “Is HMD Connected” to blueprint. This means that HMD hardware is ready to use. UE4 may or may not be using the HMD now.
Bugfix: Fixed rendering of Canvas tiles in stereo mode to be rendered for both eyes. This fixes the rendering of the background behind various stats shown by the STAT console command.
Bugfix: Fixed threading issue on Oculus Touch controllers, which could cause jittering in some circumstances.
Bugfix: Fixed an assertion when using Oculus stereo layers with MSAA, due to binding an unresolved depth surface.
New: Added analytics event to Vive HMD initialization.
New: Updating Oculus SDKs
Oculus PC SDK 1.10.0
Mobile SDK 1.0.3
Audio SDK 1.0.2
Platform SDK 1.10.0
Added a missing render target clear when using a VR hidden area mask and a post processing material.
Added in a new CVar vr.SteamVR.UsePostPresentHandoff, which defaults to 0. When set to 0, we do NOT use the SteamVR Post Present Handoff, which costs some performance GPU time. When 1, we use the call, and get some extra GPU performance. However, this call is NOT safe for scenes that have frame-behind GPU work, like Scene Capture components and Widget Components.
For users that were using 4.14.1, and seeing a GPU timing improvement, that behavior is now off by default. You can re-enable it by setting vr.SteamVR.UsePostPresentHandoff on your project to get it back. Be aware that SceneCaptureComponents or WidgetComponents may cause async reprojection in SteamVR to fail in that case.
Last week Epic Games launched the first preview for Unreal Engine 4.15, bring with it support for the PlayStation Aim controller. Today the company has released its third preview for the upcoming build, adding a significant amount of fixes.
For 4.15’s preview three Epic hasn’t added any major features like it did in the first, simply fine tuning the build further, fixing issues users are coming across as they demo it. On the VREditor side of things only one problem has need to be fixed, to do with a “Laser not hidden on MotionControllers with docked Menu/UI Panels”. So either that’s reassuring few issues have been found or not enough people are using it to find anything.
Two engines currently dominate the virtual reality (VR) industry in terms of development, Unreal Engine and Unity. Over the past year both have been making significant strides to improve VR support, namely adding editors that can work whilst using VR head-mounted displays (HMDs). While Unity Technologies purely work on developing its game engine, Epic also creates its own titles helping showcase what can be achieved with Unreal Engine.
One of these is Robo Recall, set to be released in early 2017. An evolution of earlier tech demo Bullet Train, Robo Recall will be a free exclusive for Oculus Touch owners. The studio released another dev diary yesterday, discussing the team updated the former to the latter.
Checkout the full changelog below for 4.15 Preview 3, and for any further updates from Epic Games keep reading VRFocus.
Fixed for Preview 3:
Fixed! UE-40753 [CrashReport] UE4Editor_LevelEditor!FLevelEditorActionCallbacks::Paste_CanExecute() [leveleditoractions.cpp:1602]
Fixed! UE-41130 User Defined Enums may lose their display names on upgrade to 4.15
Fixed! UE-41073 Crash when opening blueprint with collapsed nodes with structure output, split pin
Fixed! UE-41072 Implemented Interfaces are not added to nativization list
Fixed! UE-41070 Data only blueprints are not not nativized when flagged to do so
Fixed! UE-41071 Parent blueprint not added to nativization array if only child saved
Fixed! UE-41190 Ensure failure !bStaticCall nativizing blueprint calling blueprint function library function
Fixed! UE-37815 BulkData Async loading remains in memory
Fixed! UE-38767 [CrashReport] UE4Editor_Core!FArchive::SerializeCompressed() [archive.cpp:447]
Fixed! UE-41125 Static mesh LODs other than LOD0 cannot be set to screen sizes greater than 1
Fixed! UE-41220 Crash when adding multiple collision types to a mesh
Fixed! UE-40791 The Play button on the ForceFeedback effect icons is missing
Fixed! UE-41294 Reimporting skeletal mesh clears material references from material slots
Fixed! UE-41126 HISMC UpdateInstanceTransform blueprint function does not update bounds correctly
Fixed! UE-40525 CommitMapChange doesn’t fully deal with sub-levels
Fixed! UE-40939 Inconsistent line ending prompts occur in Visual Studio after adding Vehicle C++ feature pack
Fixed! UE-41163 Material curves keeps resetting to 0.f
Fixed! UE-41216 Additive Pose Asset arms become over exteneded when blended with reference pose
Fixed! UE-41082 Fix crash on cache bone with sub instance
Fixed! UE-40945 Crash trying to import facial animations
Fixed! UE-41143 Crash when launching engine without a windows audio device enabled.
Fixed! UE-41112 Crash when Dragging Skeletal Mesh with Apex Clothing into Level
Fixed! UE-37270 Changing transform of simulated component during physics freezes motion
Fixed! UE-39884 Foliage LODs are do not appear to use the base LODs lightmap any longer
Fixed! UE-40480 Ensure encountered when using the Copy/Paste sub-tool in sculpt mode
Fixed! UE-41271 Localization broken in cooked builds due to missing meta-data during cook
Fixed! UE-41253 Mobile / Use Full Precision not working on Metal
Fixed! UE-41023 Scene capture produces black texture on encoding devices with mobileHDR == false
Fixed! UE-39451 Web browser widget causes app to crash when packaging for Distribution on Android
Fixed! UE-40927 Projects crash on Android when trying to load mips
Fixed! UE-39911 Failed checkSlow(IsInGameThread()); in UWorld::GetWorldSettings
Fixed! UE-40524 Issues with PrepareMapChange/CommitMapChange and Level Collections
Fixed! UE-40810 Crash opening Infiltrator packaged on Windows for Linux
Fixed! UE-41198 Spinbox value decimal point is moved one place to the right when edited on Android
Fixed! UE-36984 TestPAL fails to compile
Fixed! UE-41146 Crash in editor when audio is playing
Fixed! UE-40451 Blueprint – User configured tvOS Bundle ID is not set properly during packaging
Fixed! UE-40392 GitHub 3111 : Fix environment variable name to the correct legacy LINUX_ROOT.
Fixed! UE-40023 UFE Deploying and launching a packaged build on Linux fails due to invalid directory
Fixed! UE-40761 Various audio clips are not playing in Elemental Demo on PS4
Fixed! UE-41209 PS4SharePlay errors are produced when launching onto PS4 with UnrealFrontEnd
Fixed! UE-41183 Crash Occurs when changing the ‘Max Metal Shader Standard To Target’ option within iOS Project Settings
Fixed! UE-38691 Launch On from Windows to Linux fails with missing GLSL_430 shaders
Fixed! UE-37016 GitHub 2842 : [Linux] Fix bootstrap script so it is independent on working dir
Fixed! UE-40956 Rare crash occurs in CoreAudio in Vehicle Game on Mac when quitting.
Fixed! UE-41042 GitHub 3160 : Fixed `ADB` being incorrectly set to `ANDROID_HOME`.
Fixed! UE-41079 NpToolkit2 fails to initialize in 6CPU mode on PS4
Fixed! UE-41167 Shader complexity is broken in the forward renderer
Fixed! UE-39754 Crash: Changing Material Property Overrides of Material Instance
Fixed! UE-40736 “Too many texture coordinate sets” warnings in KiteDemo
Fixed! UE-40873 Shadows of small movable components popping out
Fixed! UE-41193 Update material node tooltips based on 4.15 preview feedback.
Fixed! UE-40482 Ensure occurs when turning on Constraints in Advanced Show Flags
Fixed! UE-40980 Fix mem corruption on particles on PS4
Fixed! UE-40724 Large round stone in ZenGarden is no longer reflective
Fixed! UE-41138 Flickering in Elemental Demo when TemporalAA and bloom is enabled
Fixed! UE-41099 SpeedTree Material No Longer Compiles With Texture Coordinate Node In BaseColor
Fixed! UE-41008 LogApexClothingUtils Warning when opening QAGame
Fixed! UE-41311 Time snapping interval is not updating the timeline in UMG Sequencer
Fixed! UE-40682 Animations that overlap and blend together break when undoing
Fixed! UE-40758 Events on frame 0 fire twice
Fixed! UE-41019 Sequencer does not refresh on creating a new camera if Default Property Tracks is empty
Fixed! UE-41010 Fix up actors remove actor from sequencer folder.
Fixed! UE-41148 Logstreaming warning when opening the editor: “LogStreaming:Warning: Failed to read file ‘Common/RoundedSelection_16x.png’ error.”
Fixed! UE-40070 VREditor: Laser not hidden on MotionControllers with docked Menu/UI Panels
Der neueste Schuss in Sachen VR-Technologie – Die seit November letzten Jahres verfügbare Version 4.14 der Unreal Engine aus dem Hause Epic Games bekommt ein Update. Nach einem verbesserten Landschafts-Editor für VR-Welten und erweitertem PlayStation VR-Support kommt mit dem Build 4.15 nun die lang ersehnte Unterstützung für den PSVR Aim Controller.
Bereits auf der E3 2016 konnten sich Shooter-Spieler und solche, die sich einen waffenähnlichen Controller für andere Spiele wünschten, über die Ankündigung des PlayStation VR Aim Controllers freuen. In Kombination mit dem exklusiven First-Person-Knaller Farpoint wollte sich Sony den Weg in die Herzen der Shooter-Fans entwickeln. Stellt sich nur die Frage: Wann kommt das schicke Ding auf den Markt? Gerüchte grenzen das Release-Datum des PSVR Aim Controllers zumindest schon einmal auf dieses Jahr ein.
Dank des neuen Aim Controller Plugins, das Epic Games nun offiziell ankündigte, soll nun auch das futuristisch anmutende Eingaberät mit der Clownsnase Support für die beliebte Engine erhalten. Um den Controller zu aktivieren, müssen Nutzer der Unreal Engine 4, momentan ausschließlich Entwickler, lediglich in den Einstellungen für ihren Motion-Controller von „Hand“ auf „Waffe“ bzw „Gun“ wechseln. Vor allem das neue Sony Interactive Headset (SIE) soll in Verbindung mit dem Drücker einen Aufschwung erleben.
Darüber hinaus beinhaltet das Update für die Engine das experimentelle Monoscopic Far Field Rendering, das die Performance vor allem in Spielen oder Anwendungen, die über viele weit entfernte Objekte verfügen, deutlich verbessern soll. Ab sofort steht die brandneue Technologie zum Testen bereit. Wer sie aktivieren möchte, kann dies über die Reiter Projekteinstellungen und Rendering tun. Die Mobil-Settings müssen zusätzlich dazu ausgeschaltet werden, genau wie die Multi-View Assets.
Schließlich bringt Build 4.15 der Unreal Engine einige Menü-Updates für den VR-Editor, die den Entwicklern das Leben etwas leichter machen sollen. Epic Games betonte des Weiteren, dass man die verbesserte Software lediglich zu Testzwecken und nicht in Projekten verwenden soll, die bereits in der Entwicklung sind.
(Quelle: VR Focus)
Der Beitrag Unreal Engine 4.15: Ab sofort mit PlayStation VR Aim Controller Support zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!
Last November Epic Games launched the latest version of its middleware development software Unreal Engine 4.14, adding improved landscape editing in virtual reality (VR) and deeper PlayStation VR support. Developers using UE4 can now get their hands on the first preview build for the software 4.15, which again delves deeper into Sony Interactive Entertainment’s (SIE) headset, this time with the addition of Aim Controller support.
The PlayStation VR Aim Controller has been showcased at quite a few events since its first outing in June 2016 during the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles. Demoed alongside first-person shooter (FPS) Farpoint, the controller has yet to be given a release date although it’s expected this year.
The other VR update included in Unreal Engine 4.15 Preview 1 is an experimental version of Monoscopic Far Field Rendering for mobile VR, designed to aid a devices performance when creating lots of objects at a distance. The VR Editor hasn’t been left out either with several menu updates for easier access.
As with any preview build Epic Games states the software shouldn’t be used for production development, bugs are still being ironed out and improvements added. The VR changlog can be seen below or head to the Unreal Engine forums for the full list.
As ever, keep reading VRFocus for the latest Unreal Engine developments.
Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games and creator of Unreal Engine, has a unique position in the virtual reality industry. As an active supporter of VR and head of one of gaming’s most important VR-compatible game engines, when Sweeney speaks, we tend to listen.
In a recent interview with Glixel’s Chris Suellentrop, besides giving his predictions of where VR is headed in the next 12 years and some of the acculturation society will go through to integrate VR into daily life, Sweeney dropped some surprising information about just how successful the HTC Vive headset has been in comparison to the Oculus Rift. He says that out of the approximately half-a-million PC VR headsets sold to date, HTC Vive “is outselling Oculus 2-to-1 worldwide.”
While he hasn’t qualified those numbers with any specific source, and neither Oculus or HTC have given specific numbers themselves, we only have his word to go on. Still, the question remains—why? According to Sweeney, the biggest factor is Oculus’ walled garden approach to software. And if it’s continued, it could mean trouble for the company.
“When you install the Oculus drivers, by default you can only use the Oculus store. You have to rummage through the menu and turn that off if you want to run Steam. Which everybody does. It’s just alienating and sends the wrong message to developers. It’s telling developers: “You’re on notice here. We’re going to dominate this thing. And your freedom is going to expire at some point.” It’s a terrible precedent to set. I argued passionately against it,” Sweeney says.
“But ultimately, the open platforms will win. They’re going to have a much better selection of software. HTC Vive is a completely open platform. And other headsets are coming that will be completely open. HTC Vive is outselling Oculus 2-to-1 worldwide. I think that trend will continue.”
Thanks to Valve’s OpenVR API, most commercially available VR headsets have access to Steam’s VR library including Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and OSVR. The same however is not true for the Oculus Store, which only officially supports the Rift (unless you install Revive—but that’s another story).
“Any software that requires human communication is completely dysfunctional if it’s locked to a platform. And everything in VR and AR will be socially centric. Communicating with other people is an integral part of the experience. Look at the top mobile communication apps. They’re all multiplatform: Instagram, Facebook. They are only useful if you can communicate with all of your friends. If Apple had the most awesome chat platform ever, but it only ran on Apple devices, guess what? It wouldn’t succeed. Because half of your friends have Android devices.”
But what about Epic Games’ upcoming Oculus exclusive Robo Recall (2017)? Sweeney advocates for an open platform, but the studio is clearly intending to profit from Oculus’ closed-app marketplace. Sweeney responds:
“Yes. It’s funded by Oculus. It was a budget that could never be funded just on the basis of sales. So that enabled us to do some cool things. My view is that the Oculus store, which is an awesome store, should run on all PC and VR devices. Oculus would do best if they tried to bring users into their store by supporting HTC Vive and Oculus Rift and any other PC hardware that comes out. I think if they don’t do that, they’re going to pretty quickly fail, because you’re not going to want to buy a multiplayer game that you can’t play with half of your VR friends.”
We spoke with Oculus’ Head of Content Jason Rubin at Gamescom 2016, and he maintains that Oculus’ penchant for exclusive content “is the only way to viably jumpstart the market.” Check out the full article to get Rubin’s take on it.
The post Epic Games CEO: “HTC Vive is outselling Oculus Rift 2-to-1 worldwide” appeared first on Road to VR.
