Unreal Engine 4 will support Valve’s SteamVR
Epic Games has announced that its preview release of Unreal Engine 4.8 will feature official support for Valve's SteamVR virtual reality platform. SteamVR is already used on the HTC Vive and boasts capabilities such as Lighthouse, Valve's laser-based room-scale tracking solution.
Developers can now use Unreal Engine 4 to develop virtual reality experiences for the HTC Vive, which supports SteamVR. (Image Source: Epic Games)
Virtual reality has been touted as the next frontier in gaming, and it seems that Epic Games agrees too. The video game development company has announced that its preview release of Unreal Engine 4.8 will ship with official support for Valve’s SteamVR.
Valve recently partnered with HTC to debut its SteamVR technology on the HTC Vive VR headset. But while HTC was a hardware partner, it seems that Valve has found a software partner in Epic Games.
Epic is one of the first studios to work with the SteamVR development kit, but it has already demonstrated that it’s capable of ensuring UE 4’s compatibility with Valve’s software development kit (SDK). Showdown, a VR demo first demonstrated on Oculus Rift’s Crescent Bay development kit, can already be experienced on SteamVR using the HTC Vive. Furthermore, Dovetail Games’ recently demonstrated a UE 4-powered fishing simulation, Dovetail Games Fishing, at Valve’s booth during the Game Developers Conference 2015.
According to Epic Games, SteamVR is completely integrated into UE 4 across Blueprint visual scripting and native code, so projects can be built without dependency on programmer support if desired. It is also plug-and-play with UE 4, and the game engine can now take full advantage of SteamVR’s features like room-scale VR, input and Lighthouse, Valve’s laser-based tracking solution that enables users to navigate virtual worlds by walking around in the real world.
UE 4’s support for SteamVR will enable developers to create new VR content for the HTC Vive and other headsets that support SteamVR, all while using a game engine and development tools that they are familiar with. This effectively lowers the barriers for developers hoping to design for VR, which also translates into good news for end users.
The preview release of UE 4.8 is poised for release sometime this week. It will be available for anyone to download for free, access the source code and create projects for SteamVR. For more information, please visit Epic Games' website on VR.
Source: Epic Games
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