Epic Games has today launched the latest version of their popular videogame development engine, Unreal Engine 4, bringing with it significant changes targeted directly at virtual reality (VR). In addition to a series of optimisations, two significant changes have been made to roll-in additional features for VR developers.

Most worthy of note for VR developers are two key changes. Firstly, the much loved VR Editor – an environment for creating VR spaces whilst in VR – has been rolled into the official binary for Unreal Engine 4. No longer will developers have to download an external patch via Github, as had been the case since the public debut of the programme back at this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC), in March. However, it should be noted that the VR Editor remains ‘experimental’ at this point.

The other major addition is that of support for the recently announced Google Daydream head-mounted display (HMD). As with the VR Editor, Epic Games released the plugin for Google Daydream development at the time of its announcement via Github. Now however, Unreal Engine 4 offers support for the as-yet-unreleased platform as standard.

Unreal Engine 4.12 Brings Huge Changes for VR Development

Also included are a number of updates that had been made available in the ‘preview’ editions of Unreal Engine 4.12, including fixes to the OSVR plugin, VR Preview mode and an updated version of the Oculus Audio SDK. Other minor optimisations have also taken place.

Unreal Engine 4.12 is now available to download from within the Unreal Engine 4 launcher. All existing Unreal Engine 4 projects will be compatible with Unreal Engine 4.12. The full release notes for Unreal Engine 4.12 are available here, and VRFocus will continue to keep you updated with all the latest refinements of Unreal Engine 4 aimed at VR development.

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