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.
VR
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New: Updated the GoogleVR SDK to version 1.01.
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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.
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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.
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Bugfix: Fixed threading issue on Oculus Touch controllers, which could cause jittering in some circumstances.
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Bugfix: Fixed an assertion when using Oculus stereo layers with MSAA, due to binding an unresolved depth surface.
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New: Added analytics event to Vive HMD initialization.
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New: Updating Oculus SDKs
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Oculus PC SDK 1.10.0
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Mobile SDK 1.0.3
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Audio SDK 1.0.2
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Platform SDK 1.10.0
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Added a missing render target clear when using a VR hidden area mask and a post processing material.
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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.
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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.
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