NVIDIA, Epic Games bringing Unreal Engine 3 to Windows 8 and Windows RT (video)
NVIDIA and Epic Games have successfully ported the full PC version of Unreal Engine 3 to both Windows 8 and, more importantly, Windows RT. Demonstrating the achievement on a Tegra 3-powered ASUS Vivo Tab RT, it played a buttery-smooth version of Epic Citadel, suggesting that developers of both PC and Xbox games should have no problem in bringing them over to the new operating system. It also casually mentioned that both Gears of War and Mass Effect were built on the engine, heavily implying that we could see titles of that caliber coming to Microsoft's low-power OS once it makes it debut on October 26th, but we'll let you decide for yourself after the break.
This morning NVIDIA demonstrated the Unreal Engine 3 flagship demo known as Epic Citadel on a Windows RT tablet powered by Tegra. This took place at the ASUS Vivo Tab RT (the device formerly known as Tablet 600) press conference held at IFA 2012 this week in Berlin. This was the first public showing of an Unreal Engine 3-based application on the Windows RT platform. Porting Unreal Engine 3 to Windows 8 and Windows RT represents a joint effort by NVIDIA and Epic, and was made available to developers as of last week. Originally developed by Epic Games, creators of blockbuster gaming franchises such as Gears of War and Infinity Blade, Unreal Engine 3 is considered a category leader with more than 20 technology awards. It operates on nine platforms, with more than 20 integrated technologies and has been licensed for more than 225 game titles. This is a big leap forward for the Windows ecosystem as not only is one of the top game engines now available for developers to begin working with, it is also the full PC implementation. This gives developers unprecedented support for porting PC and Xbox games to a mobile platform, and vice versa. "The Unreal Engine 3-powered 'Epic Citadel' demonstration for Windows RT tablets implements the full DirectX 9 pipeline, with shaders and materials, all running beautifully on Tegra 3," said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games. "By porting the full engine as opposed to a modified mobile version, NVIDIA and Epic have made it easy for UE3 developers around the world to bring their best content to Windows RT, Windows 8 and NVIDIA's Tegra 3 processor. Windows RT code is available to licensees from Epic now and we're excited to see the great games they develop with it." This is just one of the things NVIDIA is doing to support the Windows RT platform. Stay tuned for more great announcements as we get closer to Windows RT launch on Oct. 26.
