unreal engine
Software Type: Game Engine
Developer: Epic Games
Launch Date: 1998 (Unreal)
Currently Supported Platform: multi-platform
Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998
first-person shooter game Unreal. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of genres of games and has seen adoption by other industries, most notably the film and television industry. Unreal Engine is written in C++ and features a high degree of portability, supporting a wide range of desktop, mobile, console, and virtual reality platforms.
UNREAL ENGINE ver. 1
The first-generation Unreal Engine was developed by Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games. Having created editing tools for
his shareware games ZZT (1991) and Jill of the Jungle (1992), Sweeney began writing the engine in 1995 for the production of a game that would later become a first-person shooter known as Unreal.
At first, the engine relied completely on software rendering, meaning the graphics calculations were handled by the central
processing unit (CPU). However, over time, it was able to take advantage of the capabilities provided by dedicated graphics cards, focusing on the Glide API, specially designed for 3dfx accelerators. While OpenGL and Direct3D were supported, they reported a slower performance compared to Glide due to their deficiency in texture management at the time.
Among its features were collision detection, colored lighting, and a limited form of texture filtering. It also integrated a level
editor, UnrealEd, that had support for real-time constructive solid geometry operations as early as 1996, allowing mappers to change the level layout on the fly. Even though Unreal was designed to compete with id Software (developer of Doom and Quake), co-founder John Carmack complimented the game for the use of 16-bit color and remarked its implementation of visual effects such as volumetric fog. "I doubt any important game will be designed with 8-bit color in mind from now on. Unreal has done an important thing in pushing toward direct color, and this gives the artists a lot more freedom," he said in an article written by Geoff Keighley for GameSpot. "Light blooms [the spheres of light], fog volumes, and composite skies were steps I was planning on taking, but Epic got there first with Unreal," he said, adding: "The Unreal engine has raised the bar on what action gamers expect from future products. The visual effects first seen in the game will become expected from future games."
In addition to being available on Windows, Linux, Mac and Unix, the engine was ported through Unreal Tournament
to the PlayStation 2 and, with the help of Secret Level, to the Dreamcast.
UNREAL ENGINE ver. 4
In August 2005, Mark Rein, the vice-president of Epic Games, revealed that Unreal Engine 4 had been in development for two
years. "People don't realise this but we're already two years into development of Unreal Engine 4. It certainly doesn't have a full team yet, it's just one guy and you can probably guess who that guy is," he told C&VG.
One of the major features planned for UE4 was real-time global illumination using voxel cone tracing, eliminating
pre-computed lighting. However, this feature, called Sparse Voxel Octree Global Illumination (SVOGI) and showcased with the Elemental demo, was replaced with a similar but less computationally expensive algorithm due to performance concerns. UE4 also includes the new "Blueprints" visual scripting system (a successor to UE3's "Kismet"), which allows for rapid development of game logic without using code, resulting in less of a divide between technical artists, designers, and programmers.
On March 19, 2014, at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), Epic Games released Unreal Engine 4 through a new
licensing model. For a monthly subscription at US$19, developers were given access to the full version of the engine, including the C++ source code, which could be downloaded via GitHub. Any released product was charged with a 5% royalty of gross revenues. The first game released using Unreal Engine 4 was Daylight, developed with early access to the engine and released on April 29, 2014.
To prepare for the release of its free-to-play battle royale mode in Fortnite in September 2017, Epic had to make a number of
Unreal Engine modifications that helped it to handle a large number (up to 100) of connections to the same server while still retaining high bandwidth and to improve the rendering of a large open in-game world. Epic said it would incorporate these changes into future updates of the Unreal Engine.
Unreal Engine 4 officially supports the following platforms as of 4.27
(August 2021): Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Stadia, Magic Leap, HTC Vive, Oculus, PlayStation VR, OSVR, Samsung Gear VR, and HoloLens 2. It formerly supported Google Daydream and HTML5.
Source: Wikipedia contributors. "Unreal Engine." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 27 May. 2023.