Category: Unreal engine

Posted on

Epic Megagrant Awarded to Varjo to Expand XR-1 Developer Edition Support for Unreal Engine

Varjo x Epic

Having launched its Epic Megagrant initiative last year the company has awarded over $42 million from the $100 million fund. Today, the latest beneficiary from the virtual reality (VR) industry is enterprise headset manufacturer Varjo.

Varjo XR-1

Varjo has received a MegaGrant to help further its mixed reality (MR) support for Unreal Engine, mainly focused on the Varjo XR-1 Developer Edition. The $10,000 headset launched back in December, a combination of the original VR-1 device coupled with two 12mp cameras on the front, enabling users to switch between MR and VR modes.

“Varjo currently provides one of the most advanced mixed reality hardware and software solutions for demanding industrial use,” said Sebastian Loze, industry manager for simulations at Epic Games in a statement. “We are excited to soon have mainline support for Varjo products in the primary Unreal distribution to continue delivering the highest-end visualization for our customers. The addition of new mixed reality features in Unreal Engine enables a new class of application development.”

The headset manufacturer has always focused on the enterprise market for commercial, government, and academic organizations. Its headsets have been used in automotive design, to train pilots and astronauts and help in clinical research. Customers include Volvo Cars, Boeing Starliner, FlightSafety International, and Lockheed Martin.

Varjo XR-1

“We are thrilled to have this support from Epic Games to expand our delivery of mixed reality solutions for the most demanding enterprise VR/XR applications through Unreal Engine,” said John Burwell, global lead of simulation and training at Varjo.

“With OpenXR as the target interface, developers will, for the first time, have access to the industry’s most advanced enterprise-grade mixed reality features to support composing real and virtual environments for a wide variety of applications,” Burwell continued. “Planned features include full support for Varjo’s photorealistic visual fidelity, eye tracking and real-time chroma keying. The resulting solution is likely to position Unreal Engine as the most advanced platform for enterprise mixed reality development.”

Neither Epic nor Varjo have revealed how much was awarded. As further details on Varjo future developments are released, VRFocus will let you know.

Posted on

Sony Takes Minority Stake In Epic Games With $250M Investment

Today Sony announced a strategic investment of $250 million in Epic Games to take a minority stake in the company. Epic Games is responsible for the Unreal Engine, Fortnite, Epic Games Store, and more.

Through this investment Sony has acquired a “minority interest” in Epic Games through a “wholly-owned subsidiary” of Sony. The nature of the partnership and what exactly this means for both companies going forward is not known, but it seems to be a rather mutual broadening of collaboration.

According to a press release, “The investment allows Sony and Epic to aim to broaden their collaboration across Sony’s leading portfolio of entertainment assets and technology, and Epic’s social entertainment platform and digital ecosystem to create unique experiences for consumers and creators.”

The move comes after Sony originally refused to allow crossplay on Fortnite to try and lock people into the PS4 ecosystem. They’ve since backtracked that stance and allow full crossplay with other systems.

Notably, in the press release, Epic Games Founder and CEO Tim Sweeney explains the focus on establishing an “even more open” ecosystem as part of the reasoning for the investment: “Together we strive to build an even more open and accessible digital ecosystem for all consumers and content creators alike,” says Sweeney.

Given that context, it’s unlikely this investment will lead to Epic exclusives on PlayStation systems, but it could perhaps signal a move to connect the PSN Store and Epic Games Store in some way to bridge the gap between console and PC gaming, similar to what Xbox does with its Xbox PC app and Game Pass offers. That’s purely speculation though.

Let us know what you think of the news down in the comments below!

The post Sony Takes Minority Stake In Epic Games With $250M Investment appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Unreal Engine 5 CEO: ‘All’ The Demo Tech Can Work On High End PC VR

“All” of the Unreal Engine 5 technology demonstrated in this week’s stunning reveal will be able to work with high end PC VR, according to Epic CEO Tim Sweeney.

The statement was made in an interview with tech outlet CNET:

“Certainly, all the technology we’re demonstrating will be able to run on the high end PC-based VR systems, which means a new generation of graphical fidelity, particularly in geometry. I don’t have anything specific to announce for VR here, but I think it’s going to create a really interesting march towards photorealism … and as you see devices improve their resolution and other system parameters it’s going to be very interesting.”

Unreal Engine 5 is a radical new approach to how games are made and rendered. It was revealed on Wednesday in a stunning showcase.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC5KtatMcUw&feature=emb_title

In current game engines, artists import reduced detail versions of the original assets they create. When you move far enough away from those assets, an even lower detail version is used instead. This is called LODs (Level of Details).

UE5’s new ‘Nanite’ geometry system upends this approach. Artists import the full movie-quality assets. The geometric detail is scaled in real time. This means virtual objects will look incredibly detailed up close, and won’t “pop in” or “pop out” as you move away from them.

The new ‘Lumen’ lighting engine provides full real time global illumination. This means the lighting is no longer “baked”, and light sources can move around the virtual world in real time, with the same level of impact to the environment as pre-baked static lights.

Oculus Quest?

But what about mobile-powered VR headsets like Oculus Quest?

According to Epic CTO Kim Libreri, UE5 supports lower powered platforms like Android and iOS through “scalability paths to down-resolution your content to run on everything”. That sounds like the engine will reduce the quality of the assets before compiling.

“What it means for mobile VR running on a mobile chipset, that’s going to be the same sort of answer … as getting Nanite content to work on a phone” – Epic’s CTO

Given that the Quest has just 64GB or 128GB (there are two storage models) available, asset reduction seems like it would be required alway.

So while high end PC VR experiences may leverage the huge advancements in Unreal Engine 5, don’t expect it to have much impact on Quest.

The post Unreal Engine 5 CEO: ‘All’ The Demo Tech Can Work On High End PC VR appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Unreal Engine 5 Tech Demo on PS5 Shows Where Next-gen Graphics are Headed

Epic Games today revealed a PS5 tech demo built with Unreal Engine 5, the next-gen version of the company’s game engine. With new features for advanced lighting and unprecedented geometric detail, Unreal Engine 5 hopes to enable a generational leap in real-time graphics.

Unreal Engine is one of the two most popular game engines for creating VR content. While UE 4.25 just launched last week with improvements to its AR and VR support, Epic Games today showed off a tech demo built with new foundational capabilities of Unreal Engine 5 which the company plans to launch in 2021.

“One of our goals in this next generation is to achieve photorealism on par with movie CG and real life, and put it within practical reach of development teams of all sizes through highly productive tools and content libraries,” Epic says.

Running on PS5 developer hardware, the aptly-named tech demo ‘Lumen in the Land of Nanite’ shows off UE5’s Lumen global illumination system and Nanite micro-geometry system. Here’s how Epic describes the features:

Lumen is a fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes. The system renders diffuse interreflection with infinite bounces and indirect specular reflections in huge, detailed environments, at scales ranging from kilometers to millimeters. Artists and designers can create more dynamic scenes using Lumen, for example, changing the sun angle for time of day, turning on a flashlight, or blowing a hole in the ceiling, and indirect lighting will adapt accordingly. Lumen erases the need to wait for lightmap bakes to finish and to author light map UVs—a huge time savings when an artist can move a light inside the Unreal Editor and lighting looks the same as when the game is run on console.

Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see. Nanite virtualized geometry means that film-quality source art comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons can be imported directly into Unreal Engine—anything from ZBrush sculpts to photogrammetry scans to CAD data—and it just works. Nanite geometry is streamed and scaled in real time so there are no more polygon count budgets, polygon memory budgets, or draw count budgets; there is no need to bake details to normal maps or manually author LODs; and there is no loss in quality.

In its UE5 tech demo reveal today, Epic didn’t mention PSVR 2 (which is expected to be announced after the launch of PS5), but the company did confirm that VR and AR content creation for console, PC, and standalone will continue to be supported in UE5.

SEE ALSO
PSVR 2 Unlikely to Launch at the Same Time as PS5

While this demo is extremely impressive and significant for the future of real-time graphics, it will likely be a while yet before we see this level of graphical fidelity in VR games and content.

Image courtesy Epic Games

While Unreal Engine 5 will continue to support VR development, the demo shown today was running at 2560×1440 at 30 FPS, which is far too slow for high-end VR headsets, most of which require a minimum of 80 or 90 FPS, with some demanding even higher resolutions.

VR developers will likely be able to make use of Lumen, Nanite, and other advanced UE5 features, but perhaps not at the same scale seen in the ‘Lumen in the Land of Nanite’ tech demo—at least not until next-gen graphics hardware is much more prolific.

Image courtesy Epic Games

Outside of VR games, UE5 is likely to be especially useful for enterprise VR and AR use-cases involving visualization, which typically require that detailed computer models be reduced in complexity in order to run in real-time. With Nanite, Epic is promising that UE5 will be able to ingest huge models like photogrammetry scans and CAD data, then display them natively without needing to create decimated versions with reduced geometric accuracy.

– – — – –

Epic says that Unreal Engine 5 will be available in a preview version in early 2021 and launch in full later that year. The engine will support next-gen consoles and all existing platforms including tethered and standalone AR and VR headsets.

The company also says that UE5 is being designed with forward-compatibility in mind, so developers working with UE4 now can expect to migrate their projects to UE5 when the time comes. To lead by example (and sort out the kinks along the way), Epic plans to launch its battle royale hit Fortnite on next-gen consoles in its current UE4 version, and then move the game over to UE5 in mid-2021.

The post Unreal Engine 5 Tech Demo on PS5 Shows Where Next-gen Graphics are Headed appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Epic Games Unveils First Unreal Engine 5 Details, Showcases Gorgeous Visuals and VR Will be Supported

Unreal Engine 5

After last weeks announcement that Unreal Engine 4.25 would support the next generation consoles coming at the end of 2020, Epic Games has followed that up by revealing the first details for Unreal Engine 5. Not only has that included footage running on PlayStation 5 but also confirmation that virtual reality (VR) will continue to be supported.

Unreal Engine 5

Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) is still a fair way off with developers able to access a preview in early 2021 followed by the full release late in 2021, but what’s been shown so far is already tantalising.

Epic Games wants to achieve photorealism on par with movie CG and real-life using UE5 and next-gen tech, using two new core technologies; Nanite and Lumen.

Nanite allows for film-quality source art comprising hundreds of millions or billions of polygons to be imported directly into Unreal Engine for stunning quality. While Lumen offers a fully dynamic global Illumination solution which can react to scene and light changes. Take a look at the video below to see these in action in a demo running on PlayStation 5 called Lumen in the Land of Nanite.

This all means lots of gorgeous lookings videogames across all supported formats, from next- and current-generation consoles to PC, Mac, iOS, Android and of course VR. It’ll likely be at least 2022 before title start filtering through, by then there may even be a new PlayStation VR?

Unreal Engine 5

“Certainly, all the technology we’re demonstrating will be able to run on the high end PC-based VR systems, which means a new generation of graphical fidelity, particularly in geometry,” Epic Games’ Tim Sweeney told CNET. “I don’t have anything specific to announce for VR here, but I think it’s going to create a really interesting march towards photorealism … and as you see devices improve their resolution and other system parameters it’s going to be very interesting.”

The company has also unveiled a new royalties solution for developers where royalties are waived on the first $1 million USD in gross revenue per title. Unreal Engine will still be free to download and start using as always.

As Epic Games continues to improve Unreal Engine VRFocus will keep you updated.

Posted on

Unreal Engine 5 Supports VR, Promises Generational Leap For Graphics

Epic Games just showcased its vision of next-generation console gameplay with the reveal of Unreal Engine 5. Not only that, but the new engine supports VR headsets.

Below you can see a stunning new technical showcase for Unreal Engine 5 called Lumen in the Land of Nanite. It features the kinds of graphical and technical leaps Epic expects to see made on next-generation consoles. Textures are incredibly sharp, 3D models sport a new level of detail and, for the most part, massive environments appear to load seamlessly. To top it all off, Epic says this is running in real-time on a PlayStation 5 development kit.

Speaking to Upload, an Epic spokeswoman confirmed that Unreal Engine 5 would continue to support all current VR headsets including PSVR, Oculus Quest and PC VR devices. We don’t have any other details right now, though we’ll be keen to see if these kinds of advances are still possible on new hardware when adding on the demands of a VR headset.

For now, this demo is designed to highlight two core technologies in Unreal Engine 5: nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry and Lumen. The former is designed to let artists focus on creating highly intricate details on objects and surfaces, while the latter is a dynamic global illumination system for instant, realistic lighting in a virtual scene.

Unreal Engine 5 will be arriving in early 2021 as a preview, with full release planned for later that year. PS5 and the Xbox One Series X are expected to launch this holiday season.

Excited for Unreal Engine 5 VR support? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Unreal Engine 5 Supports VR, Promises Generational Leap For Graphics appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Unreal Engine 5 Supports VR, Promises Generational Leap For Graphics

Epic Games just showcased its vision of next-generation console gameplay with the reveal of Unreal Engine 5. Not only that, but the new engine supports VR headsets.

Below you can see a stunning new technical showcase for Unreal Engine 5 called Lumen in the Land of Nanite. It features the kinds of graphical and technical leaps Epic expects to see made on next-generation consoles. Textures are incredibly sharp, 3D models sport a new level of detail and, for the most part, massive environments appear to load seamlessly. To top it all off, Epic says this is running in real-time on a PlayStation 5 development kit.

Speaking to Upload, an Epic spokeswoman confirmed that Unreal Engine 5 would continue to support all current VR headsets including PSVR, Oculus Quest and PC VR devices. We don’t have any other details right now, though we’ll be keen to see if these kinds of advances are still possible on new hardware when adding on the demands of a VR headset.

For now, this demo is designed to highlight two core technologies in Unreal Engine 5: nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry and Lumen. The former is designed to let artists focus on creating highly intricate details on objects and surfaces, while the latter is a dynamic global illumination system for instant, realistic lighting in a virtual scene.

Unreal Engine 5 will be arriving in early 2021 as a preview, with full release planned for later that year. PS5 and the Xbox One Series X are expected to launch this holiday season.

Excited for Unreal Engine 5 VR support? Let us know in the comments below!

The post Unreal Engine 5 Supports VR, Promises Generational Leap For Graphics appeared first on UploadVR.

Posted on

Unreal Engine 4.25 Improves Support for HoloLens 2, Magic Leap, Adds Azure Spatial Anchors

Unreal Engine 4.25 launched this week bringing a host of improvements to the engine’s XR functionality. HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap saw the most attention, including the addition of Azure Spatial Anchors, Microsoft’s cross-platform system which enables shared augmented spaces across devices.

Unreal Engine is one of the most popular game engines for building XR content. Each release brings improvements to the engine’s XR capabilities with new features and bug fixes. This week Unreal Engine 4.25 was released and saw a host of improvements, especially to HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap.

Epic Games says that Unreal Engine now offers production-ready support for HoloLens 2. This comes after a range of bug fixes and new capabilities now supported in the engine, including Microsoft Spatial Audio, App Remoting from packaged UE apps, mixed-reality capture, and beta support for Azure Spatial Anchors.

Image courtesy Microsoft

Azure Spatial Anchors is Microsoft’s cloud-based system which allows AR devices to recognize discrete real-world locations between sessions and to synchronize and share the position of spatial content between devices for multi-user applications.

Image courtesy Magic Leap

Magic Leap also saw a bunch of improvements to streamline development in Unreal Engine 4.25, including the ability to set up shared world experiences using new features of the Magic Leap SDK like GameMode, PlayerController, and GameState. Epic also says it has improved the AugmentedReality interface to make it easy to port smartphone-based AR projects over to Magic Leap.

SEE ALSO
Magic Leap Announces Layoffs & Pivot Away From Near-term Consumer Ambitions

On the VR side, Unreal Engine 4.25 sees a range of bug and crash fixes, and SDK updates.

Oculus’ OVRPlugin has been updated to version 1.45, along with an update to Oculus Audio which adds support for ARM64 on Quest. SteamVR has been updated to 1.5.17 and SteamAudio, Valve’s positional audio system, has been updated as well, now with support for high-quality stereo layers and dynamic geometry.

For more detail, check out the complete release notes for Unreal Engine 4.25.

The post Unreal Engine 4.25 Improves Support for HoloLens 2, Magic Leap, Adds Azure Spatial Anchors appeared first on Road to VR.

Posted on

Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4.25 Adds PlayStation 5 & Xbox Series X Support, Improves HoloLens 2 Support

Unreal Engine 4.25

Holiday 2020 looks set to be a big one for gaming fans with the next generation of consoles from Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) and Microsoft scheduled to arrive. As one of the most popular game development platforms Unreal Engine is gearing up for the new hardware with its latest edition 4.25, whilst continuing to enhance its mixed reality (MR) support.

Unreal Engine 4.25

The big news is that Unreal Engine 4.25 is the first edition to initially support PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, with further optimizations coming throughout the year. With PlayStation 5 previously confirmed to support PlayStation VR this should now make it possible for VR developers using UE4 to bring their project to the upcoming console.

Epic Games notes that 4.25 next-gen features include: “platform-specific functionality, such as new audio advancements, initial support for online subsystems, and early support for TRC and XR certification requirements.”

As for MR, Unreal Engine 4.26 improves support for Microsoft HoloLens 2. There are performance improvements, support for MR capture from a third-person camera view, initial support for Azure Spatial Anchors and the ability to enable HoloLens remoting from packaged Unreal Engine applications via a command line. Magic Leap has also seen smaller improvements such as support for its latest SDK while the Leap Motion plugin was removed from the engine as it is no longer supported.

Unreal Engine 4.25

The update also sees platform SDK upgrades including:

  • ARCore 1.7
  • ARKit 3.0
  • Oculus 1.44
  • OpenXR 1.0
  • SteamVR 1.5.17
  • Magic Leap 0.23

There are plenty of other new features and improvements to interest current and budding videogame developers. Real-time ray tracing is now officially production-ready, the platform now has built-in support for LiDAR data; making it easier for users importing, visualizing, editing, and interacting with point clouds.

A brand-new media output pipeline has been added for those wishing to create high-quality movies and stills for marketing materials or cinematics. On the audio side, Unreal Audio Engine now supports sound field rendering and convolution reverb processing to make content even more immersive.

Take a look at the full set of Unreal Engine 4.25 release notes and don’t forget that the software is free to begin experimenting with if you’re interested in videogame design. For further updates on the videogame engine, keep reading VRFocus.