When it comes to the development of videogames and virtual reality (VR) experiences in particular, for most indie developers there’s a simple choice when it comes to game engines. Either Unity or Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4. For those working with the latter, they’ll be pleased to know that Unreal Engine 4.22 has just arrived, adding all sorts of new features.
When it comes to specific virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) features in Unreal Engine 4.22, Epic Games has added support HoloLens Remote Streaming which: “allows Unreal applications to run on a Windows desktop PC and stream the rendered result wirelessly to HoloLens over a Wi-Fi connection in real time.”
When it comes to building awesome looking virtual worlds Unreal Engine 4.22 will enable developers to do so thanks to early access support for real-time ray tracing, the technology Nvidia has been shouting about ever since it introduced the RTX series of graphics cards. Ray tracing is a technology being employed in videogames to provide natural realistic looking lighting effects in real-time, making images like those above look almost photorealistic without being too resource intensive. It’s not something you’re going to see in VR titles just yet, but it’s an eventuality. This was showcased at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 with Troll (trailer at bottom of the article).
Another important step in Unreal Engine 4.22 is the reduction of build times. Epic Games has optimized UnrealBuildTool and UnrealHeaderTool to make C++ iteration times up to 3x faster it claims, releasing the following stats:
Full build (UE4Editor Win64 Development):
| Unreal Engine 4.21 | Unreal Engine 4.22 | Improvement | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Build Time: | 436.90 | 326.81 | 30% faster |
| Compiling UnrealHeaderTool: | 46.12 | 46.30 | |
| Generating headers | 25.05 | 15.50 | 60% faster |
| Compiling UE4Editor | 323.15 | 257.97 | 25% faster |
| UnrealBuildTool overhead | 42.58 | 7.04 | 600% faster |
Incremental build (UE4Editor Win64 Development):
| Unreal Engine 4.21 | Unreal Engine 4.22 | Improvement | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Build Time: | 7.47 | 2.14 | 340% faster |
| Compiling UE4Editor | 1.19 | 1.08 | |
| UnrealBuildTool overhead | 6.28 | 1.06 | 590% faster |
Epic Games’ other big announcement recently was the $100,000,000 USD Epic MegaGrants initiative, which aims to assist videogame developers, media and entertainment creators, enterprise professionals, students, educators, and tools developers who are working with Unreal Engine 4.
To learn more about Unreal Engine 4.22 head on over to the Unreal Engine blog. As the company continues to release further improvements VRFocus will keep you updated.