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NASA trains astronauts with zero-G virtual reality
To train ISS astronauts, NASA uses physical mockups, zero-G "vomit comet" airplane rides, neutral buoyancy (underwater) and other pricey and complex schemes. However, virtual reality has become a new option, allowing astronauts to do realistic training for things like maintenance in an accurate, simulated zero-G environment. The company that helped them build the sim, Epic Games' Unreal Engine, recently unveiled a video showing exactly how that works.
Nintendo's engineers have embraced Unreal Engine
If there's one thing that Nintendo has struggled with, it's enticing third-party developers to create games for its consoles. But according to VentureBeat, the company is looking to change that with the advent of the new Switch. At an investor Q&A session, Shigeru Miyamoto revealed that Nintendo engineers have been learning how to use third-party development tools like the Unreal Engine.
'MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries' revives a classic series in 2018
It's been a long, long time since there was a single-player game in the MechWarrior series -- 2002's MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries has been your only option if you didn't want to play online. Thankfully, a new wave of gamers is about to see what all the fuss was about years ago. Piranha Games (which runs MechWarrior Online) has unveiled MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, a single-player focused title that has you pursuing a career as a private robot pilot serving on behalf of the houses of the Inner Sphere.
Microsoft Research helped 'Gears of War 4' sound so good
Popping in and out of cover has been a hallmark of the Gears of War franchise since the first game came out in 2006. It hasn't changed much because it didn't need to. What's always been an issue though is how thin the game sounds -- a shortcoming of the underlying tech, Unreal Engine, powering it. But Microsoft owns the series now and has far more money to throw at it than former owners/Unreal Engine creators Epic Games did. With help from Microsoft Research, Redmond's Gears of War factory The Coalition found a high tech way to fix that problem. It's called Triton. Two years ago Microsoft Research's Nikunj Raghuvanshi and John Snyder presented a paper (PDF) titled "Parametric Wave Field Coding for Precomputed Sound Propagation." The long and short of the research is that it detailed how to create realistic reverb effects based on objects in a video game's map, to hear it in action pop on a pair of headphones and watch the video below.
'Batman Arkham VR' put me inside the Batsuit
Telltale wasn't the only developer that brought Batman to E3 this year: The folks at Rocksteady Studios packed the Dark Knight into their suitcases as well. Batman Arkham VR was a surprise reveal at Sony's keynote earlier this week and drew a huge round of applause when it appeared onstage. Once I strapped on a PlayStation VR headset (it's a timed exclusive to the platform this October), I could tell why the team worked so hard to keep it a secret.
Google's Android-powered VR platform supports Unreal games
Yesterday during Google's annual I/O keynote, the company made a point of mentioning that Electronic Arts and Ubisoft -- two of the biggest third-party game studios -- were working on projects for Google's new virtual reality platform, Daydream. Now the company is ready to announce another: Epic Games. The latest version of the company's powerful and ubiquitous game-design toolset, Unreal Engine 4, is coming to Google's next-gen mobile VR system. For developers it ensures easy porting of existing apps to Daydream with little extra work required. For consumers, it means higher-quality mobile VR experiences, and maybe more of them too.
Google's new Android VR platform is called 'Daydream'
Google might be making waves with its low-cost Cardboard virtual reality headset, but that was 2014. Daydream is now. Daydream is hardware and software baked into Android N: a headset that looks an awful lot like the Gear VR and Rift headsets, complete with a controller that looks similar to an Apple TV remote. From the sound of it, this won't usurp other hardware makers that are doing VR on their own handsets; Samsung, for instance, is actually partnering with Google here. So are Alcatel, HTC and LG, among others.
The makers of 'Titanfall' are working on a 'Star Wars' game
Respawn is ready to break out of the Titanfall mold... and in a way you probably didn't expect. The game studio has announced that it's working with EA and Lucasfilm on a third-person Star Wars action/adventure. It's saying precious little about the title, which doesn't even have a release date, but it will run on the Unreal Engine (according to job listings) and "pay respect" to the series' universe at every step. Suffice it to say that this won't just be Titanfall with lightsabers and AT-STs. It's not a guaranteed success, but Respawn's early track record suggests that it'll take Star Wars seriously.
'Hellblade' takes real-time motion capture to the next level
Yesterday, during the Epic Games keynote at GDC 2016, Ninja Theory showed off a live motion capture demo for Hellblade, its upcoming AAA indie title. The results are absolutely stunning. Tameem Antoniades, Ninja Theory's chief creative director, described the real-time animation performance as historic, and people at the event seemed to validate his excitement. Interestingly enough, the game has been renamed Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, paying tribute to the main character in this combat-heavy story. But you're probably here for the video, so have at it -- we promise it doesn't disappoint.
Watch the Epic Games GDC 2016 keynote right here!
Although plenty of announcements have already come out of this year's Game Developers Conference, the main Expo doesn't officially begin until today. And Epic Games is kicking off the festivities with an opening keynote, led by none other than its founder Tim Sweeney. It's unclear what we should expect from the Unreal Engine creator, but the company did say the GDC 2016 event will be newsworthy. You can watch it live starting at 9:30AM PT/12:30PM ET, via the embedded stream below.
'Metal Gear Solid' fan remake bites the dust
When a fan remake of a popular game dies, it tends to die quickly. Either the effort required is too much for a group of part-time volunteers, or the original developer's lawyers shut it down over copyright issues. And unfortunately, the team behind the recently revealed Metal Gear Solid remake Shadow Moses is learning this first-hand -- the creators have abruptly shut down their project for "reasons beyond our control." It's not clear just what those reasons are (we've reached out to both sides for comment), but the phrasing suggests that copyright might play a role.
Create VR experiences within VR itself using Unreal Engine
Epic Games has been teasing "the future of VR development" recently, and the team is finally ready to tell everyone what that is: Creating virtual reality content within virtual reality itself, using the full version of its Unreal Engine 4. Epic cofounder Tim Sweeney says that while the company's been supporting the likes of the Oculus Rift from the outset, the irony is that, up to this point, the experiences we've seen so far have been developed using the same tools as traditional video games. "Now you can go into VR, have the entire Unreal editor functioning and do it live," he says. "It almost gives you god-like powers to manipulate the world."
'Star Trek' virtual tour will recreate every deck of the Enterprise
You've probably seen a few attempts at recreating worlds in game engines, but never at this level of detail. Artist Jason B is working on the Enterprise-D Construction Project, an Unreal Engine-based virtual tour that aims to reproduce all 42 decks in the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation. While it's not quite photorealistic, the attention to detail in this digital starship is already uncanny -- the bridge, shuttle bay and other areas feel like lived-in spaces, just waiting for the crew to return. Jason is drawing on as much official material as he can to get things pixel-perfect, and he's only taking creative liberties in those areas where there's no canonical content.
Epic Games is the latest hacking victim
Not even a chainsaw bayonette (or the stealthy gent up above) could stop Epic Games from falling prey to hackers. The Unreal Engine-maker sent emails to members of its forums announcing that unauthorized access to usernames, email addresses, passwords and birthdates may have been accessed by an intruder. From the sounds of it, the only channels affected were related to Bulletstorm, Gears of War, Infinity Blade, UDK, and older Unreal Tournament titles.
Epic wants to avoid making 'terrible' VR with Unreal Engine
Epic Games is a big proponent of VR, led by its Unreal Engine and the integrated resources it provides to developers. These tools are designed to be compatible with most existing virtual reality hardware, including the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Samsung Gear VR. To give you an idea of how strongly Epic Games feels about the technology, CEO Tim Sweeney told us earlier this year he believes virtual reality will "change the world." On the ground at E3 2015, we sat down with Chief Technology Officer Kim Libreri and Unreal Engine General Manager Ray Davis to talk about the state of VR and where they believe it's headed.
Epic Games challenges VR devs to make sense of big data
We've seen a handful of neat ways to visualize big data and make it useful, and the folks behind Unreal Engine, Epic Games, think virtual reality is the next step for that. Currently a half-dozen international teams are taking part in the Big Data VR Challenge, and hope their expertise with games and VR will help 'em "find new ways to manipulate and interrogate" the massive amounts of info generated by science studies. As of now, projects include putting together a digital edition of one of medical history's largest collections of patient consultations (some 80,000 participants) from the 16th and 17th century and a cohort study of kids born between 1991 and 1992.
Valve releases a kit for making virtual reality apps
Eager to build a game or 3D modelling tool that takes advantage of HTC's Vive and other SteamVR-friendly virtual reality headsets? It's time to get cracking. Valve has released a software development kit that lets apps use SteamVR hardware, including Valve's controller and room-scale Lighthouse tracking. On top of that, the platform now works nicely with both the Unity game engine (through a plugin) and Unreal Engine 4. It'll be a long while before you can actually run programs built on this code -- the VR devices have yet to reach many developers, let alone the public -- but this at least gets the ball rolling.
Unreal game engine will support HTC's virtual reality headset
The crew at Epic Games has made a point of welcoming virtual reality with open arms, and it's not about to shy away any time soon. The studio recently updated its roadmap with indications that Unreal Engine 4 will support Steam VR (and by extension, the HTC Vive headset) no later than May. Also, Epic isn't wasting much time getting up to speed with Sony's newer Project Morpheus gear -- there's promises of silky-smooth 120Hz visuals, among other things. This wider support won't matter until you can buy both the VR hardware and titles based on UE4, but it suggests that there won't be a shortage of immersive gaming when everything lines up.
Photorealism on a large scale with Unreal Engine 4's new assets
"It's getting ridiculous." Epic Games Chief Technology Officer Kim Libreri is tired of chairs -- and rocks, and grass, and trees -- in the games created in Unreal Engine 4, Epic's game development platform. It's not that he doesn't like everyday objects, he simply sees them as a collective issue to fix: They're standard, repeatable items that developers don't need to spend time making, since they already exist in a ton of other games. To that end, Epic is releasing on its UE4 Marketplace a set of detailed, photo-real assets and a system that places these items intelligently throughout game worlds, available for studios of all sizes. "Once a chair's been made, there's no reason to make a custom version of that chair," Libreri says. "You might as well share it with the community.... It's mind-boggling when you think about how many games have made the equivalent of the Aeron chair."
Epic Games is giving away $5 million to Unreal Engine 4 developers
Back in the days of dial-up, when Tim Sweeney was 21 and in his third year of college, he needed cash to release his first game -- "thousands of dollars," as he recalls. To pay for the game's launch, for two summers he borrowed his dad's tractor and mowed lawns in his childhood neighborhood. Today, Sweeney is the founder of Epic Games: a powerhouse in the video game world, responsible for the Gears of War franchise and Unreal Engine, now in its fourth iteration of providing development tools to aspiring and established game developers. With Epic's status and resources, Sweeney today announced Unreal Dev Grants, a pool of $5 million available to anyone creating interesting projects in Unreal Engine 4. No strings -- or tractors -- attached.
