Epic Games has shipped Unreal Engine 4.8. The engine, which has been free to use since March, just got a whopping update with 88 pages of release notes.
- Unreal Engine 4.8 brings state-of-the-art support to VR developers:
- Now updated to Oculus Rift SDK 0.6;
- Now updated to Gear VR SDK 0.5;
- Support for the new Oculus Audio SDK;
- Comprehensive support for Valve’s SteamVR API and HTC Vive hardware;
- Improved Morpheus for PlayStation 4 features, including support for 120Hz reprojection, support for 60Hz and 120Hz dev kits, and high-quality 3D audio playback;
- Updated support for Leap Motion;
- As always, the ability to preview projects instantly using the “VR Preview” button.
Also included are features for building gorgeous open worlds and photorealistic environments, as seen in the real-time demo and cinematic “A Boy and His Kite.” Dynamic height field global illumination, screen space reflections for translucent surfaces, tone mapping, high-quality depth of field, and other rendering improvements are now in developers’ hands. There’s also dynamic navigation mesh for open worlds, a new grass system, new procedural asset generation tools, and a redesigned foliage editor.
Animators and anyone managing characters will benefit from the new default example character, which is even more physically accurate and humanlike than its predecessor.
This week the Unreal community will be able to download “A Boy and His Kite” – not just the open world content and cinematic components, but also a standalone executable for running the project. It’s coming for free to the Learn tab inside the Unreal Engine launcher, and can be used in any Unreal Engine project for commercial or noncommercial use, no strings attached.