It’s that time of year again! E3 has begun, and we’re in Los Angeles cheering on developers who are sharing new details about their upcoming games this week. In addition to talking with folks in our meeting room, LACC West Hall #501A, we’re revealing several cool new demos with our partners.
E3 attendees can stop by and see us at NVIDIA’s booth, South Hall #2323. Here we’re demonstrating the latest version of Epic Citadel running on the SHIELD. It’s the only place where you’ll see such advanced mobile content running on NVIDIA Tegra 4 graphics on the show floor.
We’re also unveiling the Unreal Engine 4 Infiltrator demo streaming from the PC to the SHIELD. You should totally check this out, so come to NVIDIA’s booth if you’re here, or watch facebook.com/UnrealEngine and @UnrealEngine for updates.
There’s more special news. You’ve probably seen or heard about the Oculus Rift, which is development hardware for games for the Oculus VR headset. You have to experience Oculus for yourself to understand how awesome it is. Just search YouTube for reaction videos and you’ll get the gist.
So what are we bringing to the table? Well, during his ‘Epic Friday’ spare time, our senior programmer Nick Whiting got the Unreal Engine 4 Elemental demo up and running on the Oculus Rift! From there our team worked closely with the Oculus guys to optimize the experience for VR and inject some memorable touches.
For the uninitiated, Epic Friday happens on the second Friday of each month here at Epic. It’s a day that gives employees the opportunity to pursue passion projects and work on anything they like. It’s helped bring clever features to our games and cool new capabilities to the engine.
Elemental is our first Unreal Engine 4 demo on the Oculus platform, and we’re eager to see how people like it. Working together with the latest hardware and updated demo make a powerful combo, and it’s only the beginning of what’s to come.
If you want to know how Nick brought Oculus support to Unreal Engine 4, check out his Gamasutra blog post. Also, if you’re an Oculus developer please try out the custom Unreal Development Kit if you haven’t done so already.
Folks visiting Oculus at E3 can also try flying, running and shooting as a virtual mech with Hawken, which is one of the best Unreal Engine 3 experiences on the Rift that we’ve tried to date.
On June 6 we welcomed NVIDIA and Oculus VR to the new Unreal Engine 4 Integrated Partners Program. This helps put their technologies in even more developers’ hands, and we can’t wait to see what our licensees build next. We are fortunate to work with such talented people and couldn’t be more excited to help kick off a new wave of games thanks to their support.
Here’s to a great E3!
Your friends at Epic