Epic Games: ‘There’s No Shortage Of New Ideas And Enthusiasm’ For VR

Epic Games has been not only a creator of some of the top games like Gears of War and Unreal, the company also supplies one of the core game engines used in top console and PC games: Unreal Engine 4. The visual power that Unreal Engine enables has powered many top games from multiple publishers, and so it should come as no surprise that Epic is bringing Unreal Engine to the latest in graphics technology, the world of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR).

With its newest release, Epic has launched Unreal Engine 4.8 with the latest multi-platform VR support including the latest upgrades for Oculus Rift, Gear VR, Morpheus for PlayStation 4, SteamVR and HTC Vive, and updated support for Leap Motion; improved photorealistic and open world rendering features and tools; full control over viewing network replays, and more. On top of that, the Unreal community can download “A Boy and His Kite” this week — not just the open world content and cinematic components, but also a standalone executable for running the project.

These tools are critical for anyone developing VR/AR content, and the development of this market depends not just on the hardware but upon the ability to create the content for the hardware. Ray Davis, General Manager of Unreal Engine 4 (UE4), spoke with [a]listdaily about Epic’s role in the rapidly-becoming-real virtual reality market.

What is Epic’s involvement in VR, and why do you consider it important for Epic?

We’re just as excited about the potential of VR as everyone else, and we’re focused on collaborating with both headset manufacturers and the early VR content creators to make sure UE4 has all the tools and workflows needed to build great experiences. In addition to that we’ve been building our own experiments and content demos to grow our internal understanding of what’s possible in this new platform. I expect we’ll continue this path of learning and experimentation with VR for a while yet, and fortunately there’s no shortage of new ideas and enthusiasm as to what the team wants to build next.

Some analysts believe that AR will ultimately prove more popular,and a bigger business opportunity, than VR. Do you agree From Epic’s viewpoint, does this affect the development of tools?

Personally I believe VR and AR will quickly converge into a single device that allows users to seamlessly switch between the two types of experiences. From a development point of view there is fortunately a large amount of overlap when building content for either VR or AR which means in turn that developers will be able to use the same tools across all platforms. I imagine initially we’ll see a large amount of hybrid VR/AR content that takes advantage of this fact, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see many PC games over the next several years also incorporate an optional VR component to augment the player’s experience if they’re an early adopter.

There are a variety of potential uses for VR outside of games, ranging from entertainment to travel to business uses, and so far marketing has been a key use in this early phase. Do you feel the other uses of VR may be a larger market than games, and do you plan to support those uses?

Well, as a gamer and a game developer I feel obliged to say entertainment will always be king, but it is true that much of the power of these new devices may also significantly impact other industries. With UE4 we’ve already seen tremendous interest from both the film/VFX and architectural visualization industries, primarily as we are all attempting to converge on photo-realism and interactivity in digital content. The emergence of this new generation of VR devices has further fueled this convergence and developers outside of the games industry are looking for options to quickly get their content and ideas into VR, and that’s where UE4 steps in. With UE4 we already have all the tools and features needed to take advantage of these platforms, even for non-gaming usage, and we intend to continue support developers of all origins who want to make great high-fidelity content.

Some concern has been expressed over the costs of VR, especially since Oculus announced that a basic VR-capable PC and their VR unit could run at least $1500. Do you feel that VR in general will be expensive to start with, and how will that shape the early market?

It’s far more important that we deliver great VR experiences initially so that people are more likely to see the potential of the platform. Prices will naturally fall as hardware evolves and more competitors enter the market so I don’t think there’s much to worry in the long run. It’s not difficult to find previous platforms that have favored lower costs over necessary performance when coming to market and see the unfortunate impact that had, so I’d much rather see us push for quality first and foremost, even if that means slower initial adoption.

Will Epic be creating games itself for VR?

We have nothing officially in the works in regards to creating games for VR at the moment. Right now we’re still focused on experimenting and working with the VR platform makers to learn as much as we can about building great VR experiences while also keeping UE4 as the best option for developers who want to develop for this emerging platform.