Unreal Engine 4.10 Released!
November 11, 2015

Unreal Engine 4.10 Released!

By Alexander Paschall

This release brings hundreds of updates for Unreal Engine 4, including 53 improvements submitted by the community of Unreal Engine developers on GitHub! Thanks to all of these contributors to Unreal Engine 4.10:

Andreas Axelsson (judgeaxl), Andrew Scheidecker (AndrewScheidecker), Artem (umerov1999), Artem V. Navrotskiy (bozaro), Cengiz Terzibas (yaakuro), Christopher P. Yarger (cpyarger), Clay Chai (chaiyuntian), Cliff Jolly (ExpiredPopsicle), Coherent UI (CoherentUE4), Derek van Vliet (derekvanvliet), Frugality, Guillaume Buisson (monsieurgustav), Ian Fox (MaideCa), Jay Mattis (braindx), Jeff Rous (JeffRous), Joshua Olson (MrMormon), Kacper Kowalczuk (Ogniok), Marat Radchenko (slonopotamus), Markus Breyer (pluranium), Michael Allar (Allar), ondys, Piotr Bąk (Pierdek), Rama (EverNewJoy), Ren Wilson (rwils), Rene Rivera (grafikrobot), Robert Khalikov (nbjk667), Robert Williams (Rottbott), Ryan Luck (overlawled), Salamanderrake, Sébastien Rombauts (Srombauts), Sergey Vikhirev (BorMor), Shaijan, ssoria, Sylvain Rochette (labidus), Tam Armstrong (tamarmstrong), TheSoeldner, x414e54

What’s New

Welcome to Unreal Engine 4.10! This release is packed with a number of great new features, but our main focus has been to increase engine stability and fix outstanding issues. Hundreds of reported bugs have been bashed, many new quality of life improvements were added, and virtually every supported platform has received updates. Unreal Engine is designed for incredible VR experiences, and every release it gets better. Epic's "Bullet Train" VR demo is powered by new features in this version, with new rendering optimizations designed specifically for head mounted displays. Mobile gets a nice upgrade in this release too, with new scalability features and support for refraction. Last but not least, great news for programmers: You can now use Visual Studio 2015 for development on Windows. And on Mac, we've revamped our Xcode projects to allow you to work more efficiently. We've also refreshed our target platforms with support for latest SDKs.

Major Features

New: Refraction Effects for Mobile

Refraction effects are now fully supported on mobile platforms. Your existing shaders with refraction will automatically work on mobile devices in this release -- no extra steps are required!

  • Enabled on iPhone 5S and above and Android devices such as Nexus 5, Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy S6
  • It can be enabled on other devices by setting the r.RefractionQuality render variable in their corresponding Device Profile

New: Optimized VR Rendering

Your VR games get faster in this release, thanks to new rendering optimizations specifically for head mounted displays. We’ve implemented a new "Hidden and Visible Mesh optimization" to reduce the GPU overhead of VR rendering. Bullet Train VR Demo, by Epic Games These two optimizations ensure that we do not spend GPU time working on pixels that will not be displayed in the actual device, because of lens distortions. The hidden area mesh works as a prepass, where we take a mesh that represents the area hidden from view, and reject everything behind the mesh. Next, for the post-processing stage, we use the inverse of that mesh, which represents the visible pixels, and then only run post processing on those. By using these two techniques, you get "free" performance! On “Bullet Train,” we saw about 0.25 ms total savings on the PC, where the total frame time is only 11ms. On console platforms you can expect to see much larger performance gains!

New: Visual Studio 2015 Support

Unreal Engine has been updated to Visual Studio 2015 on Windows platform! Visual Studio 2015 includes C++ language features like uniform initializers and delegating constructors. The new compiler is also very standards-compliant and will detect more errors in your code.

You can download the free Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition Visual Studio web site. Unreal Engine supports Visual Studio 2015 Community, Professional, Enterprise as well as Express for Desktop (with some limitations.)

Important: The launcher distribution of the engine now requires Visual Studio 2015 with C++ support enabled. Please upgrade your team now! If you use the New Project wizard inside Unreal Engine, we’ll help you get Visual Studio 2015 downloaded and installed. 

Important: The Visual Studio 2015 installer does not install C++ by default when installing manually. Make sure to choose "Custom" when prompted, then expand the Programming Languagessection, and check Visual C++.

When compiling your project the first time, be on the lookout for new compiler errors reported because the new C++ compiler is more strict. Microsoft has posted document with examples of changes that could affect your code.

If you need to continue using Visual Studio 2013, you’ll need to compile the engine yourself from the GitHub source code. The primary reason for not supporting Visual Studio 2013 in the launcher distribution is because the additional precompiled binaries, debug symbols and static libraries for both versions of the compiler would have significantly increased the engine size and caused project setup to be more complicated on Windows. We’ll be fully retiring support for Visual Studio 2013 in an upcoming release.

New: Mobile Material Quality

The new Material Quality system allows your game to easily scale all the way down to low end devices, without sacrificing quality on more modern devices! You can now generate Low, Medium and High quality versions of shaders for all materials! With each tier, you can selectively disable rendering features to increase performance on low end devices. UE4 will automatically detect a good default quality level for many popular devices. Galaxy S6 Edge (High quality materials)

  • High material quality automatically selected
  • Specular reflections, roughness, metals, normal maps and directional lighting

Galaxy S III (Material quality scaled down)

  • Material quality automatically scaled for optimal performance
  • Specular reflections, variation in roughness, metals, normal maps and directional lighting are disabled

New: UE4 Platform Updates and SDKs

Every release of UE4 contains improvements for supported platforms along with updated support for latest platform SDKs Platform highlights in this release:

  • Oculus Rift updated to support 0.8 SDK Beta
  • Oculus Mobile SDK updated to support 0.6.2
  • Xbox One was updated to the August XDK and now compiles using Visual Studio 2015
  • Playstation 4 was updated to SDK 3.00 (with Playstation VR support!)
  • iOS support was updated to SDK 9.0
  • Mac OS X was updated to SDK 10.11 (El Capitan)
  • Xcode support was updated for Version 7
  • Android now supports Marshmallow (6.0)
  • Ongoing fixes to Linux/SteamOS, and minor improvements in lower level functionality.

New: Landscape Mirror Tool

Using the new Mirror Tool you can easily make symmetrical landscapes. This is really useful for competitive two-team landscape levels!

  • Mirrors the heightmap, material layers and landscape grass
  • Mirror in either direction over the X or Y axis

New: Low-latency VR Motion Controllers

We’ve updated Motion Controller Components to now do a late-update right before we begin rendering. You can see the difference between a late-updated and a non-late-updated component’s position and rotation below. The screenshot was taken during a normal speed, side-to-side arm motion.

This is the same technique that we use to reduce latency with head mounted displays. We now update Motion Controller Component positions twice per frame: once during the input tick, and once again right before we render. That means that controls will feel more responsive, and better reflect what the player is doing in the real world. This feature is enabled by default.

New: Automatic Blueprint Node Arrangement

We’ve added a comprehensive set of layout routines for fast automatic organization of Blueprint graphs. Just right click on selected nodes and choose "Alignment" to automatically arrange those nodes. Here’s what you can do with this feature:

  • Aligning the selected nodes based on their bounds (Top/Middle/Bottom, Left/Center/Right).
  • Distributing the selected nodes along a horizontal/vertical axis.
  • Straightening connections between the selected nodes.
  • Straightening a specific link connected to a particular pin.

New: Web Browser UI on Android

Android now supports Web Browser widgets created either in a Widget Blueprint or in C++ using Slate code. This can be used to display content hosted anywhere on the web, for example a news messages to your users or help text.

  • On Android, the platform’s native web control is used so there is no increase in the executable size.
  • Web Browser widgets will be supported on iOS in a future release.

New: Gamepad Features for Android

Multiple gamepads are now supported for Android along with identifying some common controller types and mappings. The following Android controllers are automatically detected. Others will fall back to generic mappings.

Amazon Fire Game Controller and Amazon Fire TV remote

NVIDIA SHIELD Controller and SHIELD Portable

Samsung Game Pad EI-GP20

Other new features for Android controllers:

  • Mappings are now detected automatically based on the name of the controller device
  • Multiple controllers are now supported simultaneously
  • We now handle both Z/RZ and RX/RY mappings of axes to right joystick
  • Left Trigger / Brake and Right Trigger / Gas axes now work properly
  • X/Y Hat now maps to directional pad button events

Quick note about supporting more than one controller at the same time: Pressing a button on an unassigned gamepad will now associate the device ID with the first unassigned controller ID. Gamepad to controller ID assignments may also be queried or cleared with three new Blueprint nodes:

New: Xcode Project Overhaul

We’ve greatly improved how Xcode projects are generated for your game! You’ll now have access to Xcode’s live issues and "Fix It" features, and indexing is much faster. Plus it’s way easier to switch between build configurations! Instead of a single project containing multiple targets we now have a workspace consisting of multiple projects, one per target. You now open UE4.xcworkspace instead of UE4.xcodeproj in Xcode. Each project in the workspace creates a single scheme that’s used to build various UE4 targets. What is being built and run is determined by active configuration and platform. UE4 Target selection in Xcode:

New: Old:

UE4 Build Configurations in Xcode: You’ll no longer have to worry about which executable to run. Xcode will automatically choose the correct app when you switch build configurations. *Please note that changing the active configuration does not update the Executable drop down in the scheme editor, that’s a known issue with Xcode*. It will, however, use the correct app when you run from Xcode.

Even though StrategyGame.app is shown, the StrategyGameEditor.app will be launched! Project indexing should now be faster and more accurate. Additionally, live issues are displayed and Xcode’s Fix-it system works now:

New: Mobile Provisioning Profile Selector

Users are now able to explicitly select a mobile provision and certificate in the iOS Project Settings. Previously, a "best match" provision and certificate were used (and highlighted in green, as seen below). Now, there are check boxes next to them which will allow a particular provision or certificate to be used instead of the best match. If no items are selected, the green ones will be used.

Release Notes

AI

  • Bugfix: AI senses registration code no longer crashes if the AI agent is missing some senses.

Behavior Tree

  • Bugfix: Behavior Tree node instantiation no longer crashes when making AI switch from one Behavior Tree asset to another.
  • Added debugging tools.
  • Added keyboard shortcuts to toggle game HUD and debug messages in the gameplay debugger. Users can configure shortcuts in the engine config file.

Navigation

  • Bugfix: Navigation System's navigation agent comparison can now match navigation data instances with appropriate agents in multi-navmesh environments.
  • Bugfix: Navmesh raycasts now return normal vectors in the correct coordinate space.
  • Bugfix: Editor no longer triggers full navmesh rebuild whenever a map is loaded.
  • Bugfix: Editor does not not discard valid navigation meshes on level load.
  • Bugfix: Navigation bounds gathering has been fixed by delaying navigation system initialization until actors get initialized for play.

Animation

  • New: Added Anim Instance Blueprint function to request the name of a state.
  • Bugfix: Blendspace input data is no longer invalid when switching assets. Blend filter now works correctly in this case.
  • Bugfix: Blendspace editor no longer crashes when the editor opens for the first time.
  • Bugfix: Possible divide by zero removed from animation transitions using a crossfade duration of zero.
  • Bugfix: Negative curve values can be passed to animation montages and will no longer be capped to zero.
  • Bugfix: All animation sub-state machines now work properly with native bindings. Previously, only top-level state machines would work.

Audio

  • New: Using a pool to reuse XAudio2 voices for PC/XBoxOne platforms.
  • Bugfix: Activate Reverb Effect successfully activates the specified reverb effect.
  • Optimized performance when many sounds are playing at the same time.

Blueprints

  • New: Added alignment commands for blueprints.
    • Alignment methods for top/middle/bottom and left/center/right.
    • Distribution methods for horizontal/vertical spacing.
    • Straightening methods for connections between nodes/pins.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix for saving Blueprints during a Play in Editor (PIE) session.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix for prompting user to check out Blueprints during the compilation stage.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when AI Controller possesses a Pawn during the Pawn's UnPossess event while exiting PIE.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when deleting graphs or delegates while a "Create Event" node's graph is in the transaction buffer.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when PIE fails to start.
  • Bugfix: Fixed issue with duplicating Timeline nodes that was causing "Launch" to fail afterwards.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when removing a function input after a child's implementation had been deleted.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix after breaking and then re-adding pin connections to a Macro Instance node.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix with parent-child Animation Blueprint Class assets. (Related to crash reports detailing a TRASHCLASS assert at the Initialize Animation call.)
  • Bugfix: Crash fix for typing long names into blueprint function input and output pins.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix for a potential crash after hot-reloading a compiled game project.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix from invalid macros after deleting source graph in Macro Library.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when clicking in the viewport while a new map is opening.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when using "Find References" on a struct operation node (Make, Break, Set Members).
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when entering invalid values into "Make Date Time" node in Blueprints. Now it should just report an error in the log.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when using undo/redo after deletion of components from a Blueprint.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix on undo/redo when deleted Blueprint is being restored after it has been recompiled.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix for using "Draw Debug Float History" and "Draw Debug Transform History" in Blueprints.
  • Bugfix: Using shortcut keys to add local variables will no longer crash the editor when done in a graph that does not support local variables.
  • Bugfix: Removed a potential infinite loop when adjusting Actor rotation in a Blueprint function.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when using "Convert Selected Components to Blueprint Class".
  • Bugfix: Stopped resetting arbitrary defaults on cyclically-dependent Blueprint subclasses.
  • Bugfix: Asset Class ID variables set to reference Blueprint classes are no longer replaced with "PLACEHOLDER" class references on load.
  • Bugfix: Blueprints will no longer load with errors on macro nodes from a cyclically-dependent (out of date) macro library.
  • Bugfix: Fixed a rare case where Timelines would erroneously create redirectors in a Play in Editor session.
  • Bugfix: For Each Enum will now correctly iterate over all enum values.
  • Bugfix: User Defined Enums begin counting at 0, and will no longer increase in increments of two.
  • New placements of the Get Class Defaults node will no longer include array properties that contain object references. This is because it is a potentially unsafe connection.
    • As a side note, object properties are also not exposed for the same reason.
  • The Blueprint details view for non-member variables (either from a parent class or an external member reference), will no longer show uneditable options as editable.
  • The Get Class Defaults node now exposes Class and Interface variables.
  • Graph node comment bubbles have been improved so that they don’t obscure input pins on array graph node types.

Core

  • New: Cooked packages can now be loaded in the editor if cooked for the same non-editor version of the platform the editor runs on.
  • New: Optimized custom version system so that it takes less space in saved packages and is faster to access at runtime.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix on deleting an Animation Blueprint and replacing it with another one.
  • Bugfix: Fixed high memory usage by streaming packages in cooked builds.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when creating a Blueprint object from an archetype that is not the class default object and has multiple components added in Blueprint.
  • Bugfix: Fixed UDP Socket Receiver not resizing Array Reader to actual received size.
  • Bugfix: Fixed compilation issues arising from /Zm compiler flag in Visual Studio toolchains.
  • Bugfix: Fixed some threading problems with various binned malloc stats.
  • Bugfix: Corrected memory reporting with Binned Slack Current stat.
  • Bugfix: Corrected memory stats reporting on out of memory.
  • Bugfix: Multiline comments no longer break Unreal Header Tool parsing.
  • Bugfix: Non-contiguous values of user defined enums are supported properly.
  • Bugfix: Fixed usage of an invalid TLS slot ID in stats code.
  • Bugfix: Instanced subobjects in Blueprint are no longer with subobjects from the CDO. (Contributed by slonopotamus, Pull Request #1470.)
  • Fixed Log Compile typo in Unreal Header Tool log output. (Contributed by MrMormon, Pull Request #1460.)
  • Memory statistics will be output to log when the engine crashes as a result of running out of memory.
  • OS memory stats are no longer acquired every tick unless stats are being captured.
  • Bugfix: When using command line executable, only the call stack was visible after a crash. Now, the whole error history should be dumped to the console.
  • Bugfix: Crash report client should be packaged correctly now for all projects.

Editor and Tools

  • New: Added a new experimental editor preference to enable "Sequencer"!
    • Sequencer is our upcoming level actor animation and cinematics creation tool.
    • The current version is limited in features and lacks documentation. It’s enabled for pre-alpha testing.
    • Sequencer is still in heavy development and you can expect to see major improvements with every release.
    • If you are brave enough to try it out, please be sure to send feedback on the forums or AnswerHub!
  • New: "Reset to default" button on the Image Size property of a brush now resets to the size of the brush's texture, if one is set.
  • New: Actor Merging tool now supports merging of collision primitives.
  • New: Added a feature allowing Detail Panel categories to be shown or hidden dynamically.
  • New: Added a Launch Configuration setting to the Play on Device editor settings tab, allowing you to specify the build configuration you want to use when launching from the editor Launch button drop-down menu.
    • This also fixes an inconsistency where source code projects would build and launch the same configuration the editor is running, but Blueprint projects always launched using a Development configuration.
    • The default setting is now to launch with the same configuration as the editor, but any build configuration can be specified.
  • New: Added a new editor view mode to colorize objects based on their LOD.
    • Enable from the view mode menu, or using the "viewmode lodcoloration" console command.
    • The colors to use for each LOD are configured in BaseEngine.ini under LOD Coloration Colors.
  • New: Added ability to merge physics data (collision primitives) for Actor Merging tool.
  • New: Added support to UnrealBuildTool to rebuild the makefile whenever the user changes a BuildConfiguration.xml file.
  • New: Added template to the Plugin Creator that shows how to add an example Third Party library.
  • New: Changed how actor spawning / duplication works in Simulate in Editor.
    • Now actors are always spawned non-permanently into the SIE world, and are destroyed upon exiting SIE.
    • This is more in line with other property changes to actors, which are restored to their original state when exiting SIE.
  • New: 'Device Output Log' window, currently implemented only for Android devices. Hidden under editor experimental settings.
  • New: Editor Analytics now tracks abnormal termination and crash events in order to improve stability.
  • New: Editor Analytics shutdown reporting improvements.
    • Discounts abnormal termination when a debugger is attached.
    • Improved locking of shared resources when running multiple instances to avoid missed reports.
  • New: Improved Engine Analytics settings for Editor users and End-Users of games.
    • Editor users can enable/disable their own analytics that sends usage data for their Editor sessions in "Editor Preferences->Privacy->Usage Data->Options".
    • Editor users can set the default game analytics enabled state for the end-users of their game in "Project Settings->Engine->End-User Settings->Privacy".
    • End-user's setting is easy to expose to your game UI and should be presented as an option to send usage data to Epic Games.
  • Both settings are for sending analytics to Epic Games. Developers are free to add their own analytics.
  • New: Improving SuperSearch to allow you to choose Google (default) or Bing as the search engine to use. In China, Google is blocked, so Bing will allow those users to use the builtin search.
  • New: The process of duplicating Brushes in the editor has now been hugely optimized.
    • In a test level with 227 brushes, these are now duplicated in around 2 seconds instead of nearly 4 minutes as before.
    • A dialog has been added to show progress on the operation if it takes more than a few seconds.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix to project thumbnails using corrupted PNG images. Error handling is now fixed in PNG Image Wrapper to prevent this from crashing the editor.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix to editor startup. Previous, it was crashing while loading tutorial images.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when putting Recast NavMesh into a World Outliner folder.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when setting a struct variable to Curve Table Row Handle.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when expanding the viewport toolbar while in 2x2 view.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when freelooking in editor viewports due to view rotation matrix calculation bug.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when importing invalid FBX files.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix to renaming asset files outside of the editor while the editor is open.
  • Bugfix: Brush extrusion now works correctly when a Brush actor is rotated.
  • Bugfix: Duplicating an array of instanced objects in a Property Tree will correctly deep copy the objects instead of a shallow (referenced) copy.
  • Bugfix: Clicking a Text property field corresponding to multiple properties will no longer cause the "Multiple Values" text to be committed to those properties.
  • Bugfix: Fixed an issue where widget deltas were not being correctly calculated when the widget was positioned behind the camera. This had meant that Ctrl+Mouse Button dragging to move the currently selected actor(s) along one of their axes was not working if the widget was behind the camera.
  • Bugfix: Fixed Search Box widgets in context menus (for example, the search box in the Blueprint Editor context menu) so that clicking the clear button doesn't also close the parent menu.
  • Bugfix: Win DualShock plugin now links in Debug Editor mode.
  • Bugfix: Merge Actors tool correctly replaces the source actors with a merged one.
  • Bugfix: Mirrored blocking volumes now correctly generate collision geometry.

Content Browser

  • New: Content browser asset discovery optimized. (Contributed by slonopotamus, Pull Request #1516.)
  • Bugfix: Newly added collections don’t lose their selection state once you name them.
  • Can no longer duplicate maps via the content browser.

Landscape

  • New: Added a mirroring tool to allow you to mirror Landscape geometry and layers using a plane.
  • Bugfix: Fixed a crash with landscape that has painted holes when using ES2 feature level preview or the Mobile Previewer.
  • Bugfix: Fixed a race condition in material compilation that may have been causing a hard-to-reproduce crash during landscape painting.
  • Bugfix: Fixed an issue where a None entry in the Landscape Grass Output node would cause landscape grass meshes to be assigned to the wrong layer.
  • Bugfix: Fixed an issue where landscape grass with more than 5 layers only showed the last layer.
  • Bugfix: Landscape "move to level" tool doesn’t get stuck when moving components, including after the user releases the mouse.
  • Bugfix: Undoing deleted landscape components no longer leaves them uneditable.
  • Bugfix: Landscape grass no longer leaves "Lighting needs to be rebuilt" warning after a static lighting build.
  • Landscape Grass no longer wastes memory storing empty grass map data for areas of the landscape which don't have any grass instances.
  • Removed the Layer Debug viewport view mode menu item when not in landscape edit mode.
    • This view mode it doesn't make sense without the layer checkboxes.
    • Enabling it outside landscape edit mode would previously cause the landscape to disappear.

Material Editor

  • Bugfix: Duplicate entries no longer appear in the results of searches in the Material Editor context menu.

Matinee

  • Bugfix: Editor no longer hangs when pressing "F" to frame an object while Matinee has a locked actor defined.
  • Audio tracks will now start playing from the correct position when scrubbing in matinee.

Persona:

  • Bugfix: Crash fix related to state machines, states, and transitions when undoing and redoing deletions and creations.

PhAT:

  • New: Added Field of View slider to PhAT editor view.

Source Control:

  • Added support for the 64-bit git executable to the Git Source Control plugin on windows. (Contributed by SRombauts, Pull Request #1538.)

World Browser:

  • Bugfix: World composition no longer allows layers to be created with non-unique names.
  • Bugfix: Handled a potential issue with Hot Reload while World Composition window is open.

Foliage:

  • New: Visibility for each foliage mesh type can be switched on/off per Editor viewport.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when assigning a new Static Mesh to Foliage that is painted across multiple levels.
  • Bugfix: Foliage selection highlight no longer remains after an undo operation.
  • Added a "Use as Occluder" checkbox to the foliage tool to allow foliage to correctly receive D-Buffer decals.

Cooker:

  • New: Stopped some editor debug content which wasn't required at run time from being cooked.
  • Bugfix: Fixed an issue with modified content not getting deployed to the devkit when the project folder name and project name don't match.
  • Bugfix: Added missing parameters like "cookall" to File -> Cook editor feature.
  • Cooking warning related to Persona tutorial will no longer appear.
  • Disabled some slow editor cooking stats.
  • StableSort is used to sort .pak files in order to preserve previous sorting by file. (Contributed by Shaijan, Pull Request #1377.)

Gameplay Framework

  • New: Allow binding of the Section (§) key.
  • New: Blueprints can now draw circles via the Debug Draw Circle node.
  • Changed UTextRenderComponent to respond to the culture being changed, rather than constantly tick.
  • Child Actors will no longer become disconnected from their parent when using SetClass.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when detaching child components if an On Attachment Change implementation also detaches a sibling component.
  • Bugfix: Fixed a potential infinite loop case in post-transform navmesh updates that could lead to a crash.

Content Examples

  • Removed the Blur G-Buffer stand in the Post Processing content examples map, as that feature has been removed for some time.

Localization

  • Bugfix: Crash fix on Windows (Chinese version) when changing editor language.

Networking

  • New: The replay streaming system can now scrub to a new time while playback is paused. Try it out in ShooterGame!
  • Bugfix: The output log no longer spams "no owning connection" warnings when a client uses the "ToggleDebugCamera" console command.

Other

  • New: Added in support for haptic feedback effects, which use curves of amplitude and frequency to define the response players feel in their motion controllers.
  • New: Updated Oculus Mobile SDK (GearVR) to version 0.6.2.
  • New: Updated Oculus SDK to 0.8.
  • Bugfix: Fixed improper reporting of Is HMD Enabled.

Physics

  • Bugfix: Fixed precision issues with physics handles where rotation had to be fairly large to update target on PhysX.
  • When entering "show collision" from the console, builder brushes are no longer rendered as they are now an internal detail and not intended to be viewed.

Platforms

  • New: Default movie player now has an optional bWaitForManualStop flag to prevent continuing until movie is explicitly stopped.
  • New: Support for PNG and JPG splash screen images added on Linux, Mac, Windows. (Contributed by labidus, Pull Request #1444, and x414e54, Pull Request #1399.)
  • Bugfix: Android build and iOS build and orientation setting overrides now save to .ini properly.
  • Bugfix: Pinch events now trigger correctly every time.
  • The correct texture LOD bias is now used when cooking.
  • Added Touch Event Locations to pair with touch events since we want the actual location for that event. After a release, the finger ID may be reused for another touch far from the location of the release so the wrong location would be sent for all the events.
  • Fixed editor primitives (e.g. debug wireframes) rendering flipped upside down on OpenGL ES2.

Android

  • New: Support for an optional launch screen for Android projects.
    • A "Show launch image" checkbox in the Android Platform section of the Project Settings enables this feature. Examples for portrait and landscape may be found in Engine/Build/Android/Java/res/drawable as PNG files.
    • Click on the "..." link next to the image in the Launch Images section of the Android Platform section to bring up a browser to copy your own image into the project.
    • If the launch image is enabled, either or both launch images selected for the project will be included depending on the orientation setting in the project.
  • New: Added new targetSdkVersion setting for AndroidManifest.xml to allow overriding default minSdkVersion value.
  • Bugfix: Fixed backslashes in path for Android plugin XML on Mac.
  • New: Device Profile detection mechanism has been changed so that new Android devices can be detected and assigned a Device Profile using user-specified rules.
    • Instead of being hardcoded in C++, the matching rules are now specified in BaseDeviceProfiles.ini in the [/Script/AndroidDeviceProfileSelector.AndroidDeviceProfileMatchingRules] section.
  • New: First implementation of Slate Web Browser for Android.
  • New: It is now possible to package for a selected set of Android texture formats rather than just all or one.
    • Check the checkboxes for the formats you wish to cook for in the Platforms, Android project settings tab.
    • Select the Android_Multi cook variant when packaging.
  • New: Multiple AdMob Ids may now be entered and Show Ad Banner now takes an index. New Get Ad ID Count BP node returns the array size.
  • New: proguard-project.txt is now generated with additions from an optional ProguardAdditions.txt file in the project's Build/Android directory.
  • New: We have reduced the number of Android OpenGL ES shaders that we cook, so your app should be slightly smaller.
    • We no longer cook separate 32-bit and 64-bit per pixel HDR shaders because the setting is chosen on the device at launch time.
  • Bugfix: Galaxy S4 device variants with PowerVR GPUs (eg GT-I9500) no longer show a black scene when Mobile HDR is enabled.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix on accepting editbox text in some potential cases.
  • Bugfix: The Device Profiles editor no longer creates blank device profiles for the various Android texture format variants.
  • Bugfix: Global (activity) audio pause handles recovery correctly in the case that the game was already paused.
  • Bugfix: Android reliably logs crash callstacks.
  • Fixed deploy to Android devices connected over Wi-Fi to ADB.
  • The device model number and make, Android version, GPU family and/or OpenGL ES version can be evaluated using comparisons or regular expressions to select a Device Profile. The Device Profile can then set console variables to optimize the performance of Unreal Engine on the detected device.
  • The default settings detect common devices and assign them a profile based on Android_High, Android_Medium or Android_Low.
  • Android now reliably logs crash callstacks.
  • Android project Build/Android/src cleanup now only deletes the OBB downloader's generated java files.
  • Keystore passwords are stripped from DefaultEngine.ini in pak files.
  • Window resize is only triggered if orientation changes on APP_CMD_CONFIG_CHANGED event.
  • Replaced default downloader background image (smaller PNG with correct aspect ratio).
  • Special characters < > & ' " in Android application display name requiring escaping are now automatically handled.
  • Updated minimum SDK option tooltip to indicate 9 is the lowest value supported.
  • Updated tooltip for Android Package Name to indicate that it must have, at minimum, two sections separated by periods.
  • Fixed fullscreen immersive with launch screen enabled

iOS

  • New: Added Device Profiles for new iOS devices. (iPhone 6S, iPad Mini 4, etc).
  • Worked around an issue with iPhone 6 devices when trying to link a shader at runtime. This would cause an internal compiler error. We now will fall back to using OpenGL in this case.
  • New: Added support for adding additional linker flags for iOS builds in the iOS project settings. (Contributed by derekvanvliet, Pull Request #1282.)
  • New: Added support for controlling the idle timeout via the Control Screen Saver node for iOS.
  • New: Added support for controlling iPhone vibration for iOS.
  • New: Fix for UI User Notification Settings usage on pre-iOS 8 SDKs.
  • New: General improvements to the AV Foundation Media framework.
    • Corrected issue when playing a movie file the second time.
    • Looping is supported.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix to game startup when using MSAA with Metal on iOS devices.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when releasing uniform buffers encountered after multiple level loads.
  • Bugfix: Fixed occasional hang in UnrealPak when utilizing pak files from File|Package in the editor on Mac.
  • Bugfix: Fix for occasional loss of audio when going to the lock screen, pressing the home button, or utilizing the slide out.
  • Bugfix: Fixed an issue with 3rd party framework access when building iOS games on a remote build server. (Contributed by judgeaxl, Pull Request #1125.)
  • Bugfix: Static libraries are now being pushed to the remote server when compiling iOS from PC. (Contributed by pluranium, Pull Request #1483.)
  • Bugfix: Fixed invalid permissions for files copied as part of a remote iOS build. (Contributed by TheSoeldner, Pull Request #1578.)
    • Fixed a compilation error when building for iOS 7 and above. (Contributed by BorMor, Pull Request #1547.)
  • Bugfix: IOS now properly links against the correct stdlib. (Contributed by ssoria, Pull Request #1568.)
  • Improved compatibility with Bundle Names which include special characters.
  • Improved compatibility with iOS App Store by removing Custom Resource Rules and enabling Full Screen for games.
  • Temporarily disabled the launch to device for iOS from Mac due to an issued discovered with the latest instruments from Xcode 7.
  • Worked around an issue with Metal on A7 devices with iOS 9 which would cause a black screen, but no crash. We now will fall back to using OpenGL in this case.

Linux

  • New: Added Tanglu OS to install script. (Contributed by cpyarger, Pull Request #1577.)
  • New: All input will be ungrabbed before breaking into debugger on Linux.
  • New: Implemented Linux device profile selector.
  • New: Implemented memory prefetch functions in platform abstraction layer for Linux.
  • New: Linux: ensure() callstacks will now be symbolicated, symbolication has been sped up. (Contributed by bozaro, Pull Request #1583.)
  • New: LinuxNativeDialogs third party library is no longer built during the setup on non-Ubuntu distributions (it is no longer used).
  • Bugfix: Crash fix related to invalid windows. (Contributed by andreasschultes, Pull Request #1589.)
  • Bugfix: Corrected calculation of number of physical cores on Linux.
  • Bugfix: Corrected calculation of window coordinates when processing event queue. (Contributed by ExpiredPopsicle, Pull Request #1466.)
  • Bugfix: Fixed custom cursors on Linux. (Contributed by overlawled, Pull Request #1582.)
  • Bugfix: Fixed index out of range error in Slate File Dialogs. (Contributed by chaiyuntian, Pull Request #1548.)
  • Bugfix: Fixed modal dialog on Gnome. (Contributed by yaakuro, Pull Request #1388.)
  • Bugfix: Corrected reporting of platform memory stats (process and overall machine) on Linux.
  • Command line switch "-usehyperthreading" is now respected on Linux for consistency with other platforms. (Contributed by slonopotamus, Pull Request #1594.)

Mac

  • New: Added support for automated and unattended reporting modes to Crash Report Client on Mac OS X.
    • Ensures are now reported as well as crashes.
    • Crash report files with spaces in their paths now work correctly.
  • New: Added support for p4 command line tool installed in /usr/local/bin.
  • New: Enabled subsurface scattering on OpenGL.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix at exit that if GLog was initialized before the game thread was created.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix on clicking a dropdown located in an inactive window in apps using the standalone OpenGL renderer.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix on Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10) and earlier related to debug symbols (.dSYM) being wrongly treated as dSYM bundles by the OS when next to the associated binary. Moved dSYM files out of application bundles.
  • Bugfix: Crash Report Client on Mac OS X can now reopen the correct project when 'Send & Restart' is used.
  • Bugfix: Fixed handling of mouse cursor position in non-native fullscreen modes on secondary screens.
  • Bugfix: Stopped Mac OS X compiler stripping necessary allocator overrides and causing memory errors.
  • Bugfix: Mac icon preview in the project properties no longer displays swapped colors.
  • Bugfix: Fixed splash screen rendering for images with DPI different than 72.
  • Bugfix: Fixed strange reflections in templates on Mac OS X by re-enabling seamless cube map support.
  • Bugfix: Temporal AA rendering on Mac OS X correctly handles NaN values. Disabled shader code that relies on features not yet available on Mac OS X.
  • Bugfix: Fixed window activation when clicking on a draggable widget of an inactive editor.
  • Bugfix: Fixed window reordering issues on app activation.
  • Allowed windows to be larger than a single monitor on Mac OS X so that taking screenshots of projects at iOS Retina resolutions works.
  • Android device detection in editor keeps the last ANDROID_HOME setting in .bash_profile instead of the first.
  • Re-enabled seamless cube-map support in Mac OpenGL to stop strange square reflections appearing in template projects.

Playstation 4

  • New: Added ability to use unsafe command buffers to reduce CPU overhead. Enabled in PS4 projects settings. Saves approx 0.4ms of CPU on draw thread in ShooterGame when running single threaded.
  • New: PAK files are now padded and compressed in PKGs to reduce patch sizes for titles built with 4.10 and later.
  • New: Updated to SDK 3.000.
  • New: Vertex/Index buffers now always use GPU memory unless they specifically require CPU readback.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix in the PS4 GPU allocator when a chunk is destroyed.
  • Bugfix: Procedural mesh components now draw on PS4.
  • Bugfix: Touch pad now works when Morpheus is enabled.
  • Bugfix: Fixed constant reverb on all sounds.
  • Bugfix: DS4 Touch and Mouse are now initialized properly.
  • Bugfix: Touch events hit widgets correctly when running on Morpheus.
  • Bugfix: Fixed PS4 C# projects getting added to the UE4 Solution when the PS4 SDK is not installed.
  • Bugfix: Fixed directory iteration not working correctly with certain deep folder layouts. Fixes issues with missing levels when using world composition.
  • Reduced the size of command buffer blocks to 64k. This reduces the memory overhead of parallel rendering and reduces pressure on the Onion GPU memory pool.
  • Moved Vertex and Index buffers to allocate from Garlic memory unless they require CPU readback. This reduces pressure on the small GPU Onion memory, and is a small GPU perf boost.
  • Fixed a packaging bug what would cause packaging to fail if a 50GB bluray was required, but only a 25GB bluray was specified.

Xbox One

  • New: Distance field ambient occlusion and shadowing are now enabled on Xbox One.
  • New: The default Xbox One XDK has been updated to August 2015.
  • New: Various rendering optimizations have been made in preparation for a future switch to the fast semantics driver.
    • Dynamic vertex and index buffers are now handled manually, saving time spent in the driver and avoiding syncing with the GPU.
    • Swapchain handling updated to latest APIs.
    • Removed some old verification code that won't work with fast semantics.
    • Shader compilation options tweaked for slightly better GPU performance.
  • Memory corruption is prevented in the case that an invalid controller ID is passed into the force feedback channel functions.

HTML5

  • Bugfix: Fixed issue when copying the HTML5 helper command template due to read only file attributes.
  • Bugfix: Numerous path slash issues for HTML5 packaging on Mac have been fixed.
  • Bugfix: String Builder now outputs "\n" instead of system dependent line endings.

Windows

  • Memory corruption is prevented in the case that an invalid controller ID is passed into the force feedback channel functions.

Programming

  • Modified DDS cubemap loading to prevent an array overflow. (Contributed by ExpiredPopsicle, Pull Request #1315.)

Rendering

  • New: Render Target 2D can now automatically generate all mipmaps. (Contributed by CoherentUE4, Pull Request #189.)
  • New: Show a warning message when going over the texture streaming budget.
  • Bugfix: Fixed a case where material billboard components were culled incorrectly.
  • Bugfix: Fixed an issue when rendering translucent materials in the HUD using Draw Material.
  • Bugfix: Cloth and skeletal meshes no longer flicker when almost out of view.
  • Bugfix: Fixed particle systems that have dirty distributions saved to disk.
  • Bugfix: Fixed dithered LOD transitions on HISMC meshes with materials without dithered LOD transitions.
  • Bugfix: Flickering due to incorrect LOD rendering no longer occurs when adjusting the transform of a Hierarchical Instanced Static Mesh instance at runtime.
  • Bugfix: Flickering due to occlusion queries no longer occurs when Hierarchical Instanced Static Mesh Components are added or updated at runtime.
  • Bugfix: Light Accumulation target are now resolved before being used in non-tiled reflections.
  • Bugfix: "Use as Occluder" checkbox now functions correctly for Hierarchical Instanced Static Mesh Components.
  • Bugfix: Fixed procedural mesh components not drawing on certain platforms due to the Max Vertex Index not getting set correctly.
  • Bugfix: Motion blur on cloth fixed. (Contributed by braindx, Pull Request #123.)
  • Bugfix: Fixed a case where an unbound depth target was causing artifacts.

Lighting

  • Bugfix: Crash fix when using Light Propagation Volumes with translucency.
  • Bugfix: Fixed a case where Lightmass could hang indefinitely.
  • Bugfix: Fixed objects being culled by the near plane of the shadow frustum with RTDF shadows: shadow casters behind the camera no longer pop out.
  • Bugfix: Subsurface Profile now displays the correct colors.
  • Bugfix: Fixed skylights on translucency in projects with static lighting disabled.

Postprocessing

  • New: Subsurface scattering is enabled on OpenGL platforms.
  • Fixed a performance regression in the Screen Space Ambient Occlusion.

Optimizations

  • New: Added Screen Space Ambient Occlusion scalability.

Mobile Rendering

  • New: Refraction on mobile, enabled by default for high-end devices.
  • Bugfix: Fixed incorrect reflection transforms when using unlit materials with forward shading.
  • Bugfix: Fixed several issues with scene capture rendering.
    • Final color captures now work with forward renderer.
    • Crash fix when using captures when mobile HDR is not enabled.
    • Fixed possible bug in post processing that could incorrectly resolve an image when a sub rect of the scene render target was used.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when using Depth of Field in iOS platform.
  • Bugfix: Handled precision issues with Object Scale material function on some Android devices.
  • Bugfix: Crash and rendering issues on Nexus 5 with Android 4.4.4 when map has decals.

UI

  • Bugfix: Crash fix during editing arrays in the Widget Blueprint property editor.
  • Bugfix: Fix animation for byte and enum properties for values greater than 1.

Slate

  • New: Slate Windows whose dimensions are bigger than the work area are now clamped in size so that they are not clipped.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix when deleting a Slate Image Run that isn't set to use a dynamic brush.
  • Bugfix: Set Button Style (on Buttons) now updates hovered and pressed sounds. These sounds can be dynamically changed from a Blueprint by switching the button's style.
  • Bugfix: Fixed a rendering issue with submenu button entries which was causing their text to turn black when opening their submenu.
  • Bugfix: Resetting a slate brush image size will now correctly reset to the image size and not to the default slate size (32x32).
  • Bugfix: Text Box is now updated when Set Text has same text, but with case changed.

UMG

  • Bugfix: Crash fix when dragging widgets out of Switchers in the UMG designer.
    • Fixed unsafe active widget index in Widget Switcher that could act as out-of-bounds index into child array.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix on adding a UMG widget to the viewport twice.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix with Scroll Widget Into View. Providing a null value will no longer cause a crash.
  • Bugfix: UMG editor no longer allows invalid object names when renaming widgets.
    • Having a period in the name of a widget would cause the editor to crash after copying and pasting.
  • Bugfix: Fixed an issue with UI materials where they were not gamma corrected and rendered darker on mobile devices than on PC.
  • Bugfix: Fixed Blueprint compilation issue in which UMG widgets containing an instance of the widget being edited would fail to auto-compile.
  • Bugfix: Slider value has been clamped to [0, 1] to prevent the handle from sliding off the bar.
  • Bugfix: The Left menu anchor position now offsets by the correct amount.
    • Slider Locked/Handle Indent properties are now respected.
    • The Widget Component will now correctly hit test once again.
  • Bugfix: Fixed several Slate controls, such as Slider and Checkbox, on touch devices. They once again respond to touch events.

Programming Release Notes

Audio

  • Optimized FAudioDevice::FindActiveSound by reducing weak object pointer comparisons.

Animation

  • New: Added basic support for MasterPoseComponent to UPoseableMeshComponent.
  • Bugfix: Fixed over-counting memory issues in exclusive GetResourceSize reporting in both UAnimSequence and USkeletalMesh.

Navigation

  • ARecastNavMesh::OnNavMeshGenerationFinished has been made virtual so that game-specific ARecastNavMesh-derived classes can easily react to that event.
  • Cached World pointer has been removed from NavigationData class since it had the potential to cause Garbage Collection issues.
  • Navigation Data instances get cleaned up in EndPlay now, rather than waiting until Destroyed.

Core

  • New: Added custom deleter support to TSharedPtr.
  • New: Added support for nested serializable objects during conversion to JSON.
  • New: Added FVector::DistSquaredXY helper function. (Contributed by EverNewJoy, Pull Request #1365.)
  • New: FCachedReadPlatformFile can now be disabled to decrease memory usage at the expense of speed.
  • Disabled Hot-Reload functionality in game builds.
  • Fix multiline comments parsing in UHT, where end of comment was treated as start of one, e.g. /*/ Comment /*/
  • Fixed a lot of Hot-Reload errors.
  • Fixed return value of HexToBytes.
  • ModuleRelativePath Metadata will now be properly generated for structures in UnrealHeaderTool.
  • Fix "error: '&' within '|'" in EditorPerformanceTests.cpp when using clang-3.5.2. (Contributed by slonopotamus, Pull Request #1430.)
  • Fixed LogCompile typo: Tabify time was was... (Contributed by MrMormon, Pull Request #1460.)
  • Removed unnecessary memory allocations from TMultiMap::MultiFind.
  • UPackage::PackageFlags made private.
  • Classes referenced by ConstructorHelpers::FClassFinder will no longer be garbage collected when unreferenced.
  • Fixed a rare crash when streaming packages and loading objects not asynchronously in one of the streamed object's PostLoad functions.

Editor and Tools

  • New: Slow Task dialogs can now be set to automatically open only after a certain amount of time has passed.
    • This can be useful if it's not necessarily known in advance how long a task will take, but where opening the dialog for only a second or so would be disruptive.
  • Fixed a bug that was causing TAssetPtrs to point to the wrong objects during play-in-editor sessions.

Cooker

  • The BuildPatchServices plugin now compiles correctly on non desktop platforms.

Gameplay Framework

  • New: AAmbientSound can now be extended in game modules.
  • New: ASceneCaptureCube can now be subclassed by game modules.
  • Bugfix: Crash fixed in CheckStillInWorld() after Actor has been destroyed or is not in the world.
  • Bugfix: Crash fix in RepairWorldSettings() when the UWorldSettings subclass originally saved with the map no longer exists.
  • Deprecated unused USkinnedMeshComponent::bCharDistancetDistanceFactor.
  • Fixed crash when PlayerController is given a LocalPlayer in commandlet mode.
  • Updated async trace handling to accept trace requests more widely. Avoids some asserts when poorly-timed requests would come in.
  • Using the assignment operator for FActorSpawnParameters will no longer cause a deprecation warning.
  • USceneCaptureComponentCube::UpdateContent is now callable outside of Engine module.

Networking

  • Bugfix: Corrected receive buffer size in UDP Socket Receiver.
  • Fixed an issue that could cause the value of AWorldSettings::WorldGravityZ not to be applied on clients after it changed on the server.

Online

  • New: FWebImage class now detects image format based on the file header instead of relying on http mime headers being set up correctly.

Windows

  • New: FCachedReadPlatformFile is off by default on Windows since WindowsPlatformFile already caches the reads.

Mac

  • Improved error handling in Mac media player.

Android

  • New: A new Android plugin system is included in 4.10 and the GearVR plugin now uses it. Changes to the generated AndroidManifest.xml, proguard-project.xt, and GameActivity.java may be made during packaging along with staging files by adding an AndroidPlugin property in their build.cs to reference an XML file containing commands; see GearVR.build.cs and GearVR_APL.xml for an example. AndroidPluginLanguage.cs documents the commands available.
  • Fixed Resolution cache RequestedContentScaleFactor log message.
  • Fixed compile errors in GearVR plugin for non ARMv7 targets.
  • Changed the way AAPT is located to check PgkRevision instead of always using first subdirectory of build-tools in Android SDK.
  • CompileOpenGLShader for Android now only checks the compile result immediately during initial shader tests.
  • Default for Android SDKAPILevel is now "matchndk" instead of “latest”.
  • Fixed issue with bool.ToString() on Mono returning "True" or "False" instead of "true" or "false" in Android plugin language.
  • Fixed missing #include needed for non-unity Android builds.

PlayStation 4

  • Fixed Visual Studio debugger .NatVis issues. TSparseArray, TBitSet, TMap, and TSet can now handle indices > 31 and invalid values now display "Invalid" correctly.

Rendering

  • Bugfix: Crash fix in FDynamicSkelMeshObjectDataGPUSkin when using MasterPoseComponent on something other than USkeletalMeshComponent
  • Improved clearing render targets on D3D12. (Contributed by JeffRous, Pull Request #1621.
  • Fixed an issue on D3D12 where indirect arguments had the wrong offset.
  • Fixes for D3D12 resource binding on Tier 1 hardware.

Upgrade Notes

C++ API Changes

  • Multiple AdMob IDs may now be entered and Show Ad Banner now takes an index. New Get Ad ID Count Blueprint node returns the array size. ShowAdBanner() method in advertising provider now takes an int32 Ad ID Index
  • Fixed return value of the HexToBytes function. Code which uses the return value of HexToBytes should be aware that the return value is now 1 more than before
  • UPackage::PackageFlags made private. UPackage::PackageFlags has been deprecated and should no longer be set or read directly. Use Get/Set/Clear/HasAny/HasAll PackageFlags instead
  • "Reset to default" button on the Image Size property of a brush now resets to the size of the brush's texture, if one is set. IDetailPropertyRow::OverrideResetToDefault() parameters have changed to take a single parameter of type FResetToDefaultOverride that defines the override behavior.

Blueprints

  • New placements of a GetClassDefaults node in a Blueprint function graph will no longer expose array properties that contain object references. This is currently needed in order to prevent mutation of a default object that belongs to an owning class
    • Existing placements will preserve any exposed property whose default value is an array of object references, but the Blueprint compiler will now emit an "unsafe connection" warning in this case, as it's a potential risk, as we don't currently support read-only object references in a Blueprint.

Xbox One

  • The default Xbox One XDK has been updated to August 2015. A minimum XDK version of August 2015 is required to build using the Visual Studio 2015 XDK version on Xbox One.

Playstation 4

  • PS4 updated to SDK 3.000. SDK 3.000 is now required to compile on PS4
  • If you are using Morpheus, you must edit your param.sfo and enable it in the settings.

Oculus

  • Users should update their Oculus runtimes to 0.8, provided on the Oculus website.