June 10, 2015

Unreal Engine 4.8 Released!

By Dana Cowley

The largest update to Unreal Engine to date, this release includes 189 great changes that were submitted from our amazing community of developers, plus loads of new upgrades from Epic. Check out the full list of contributors on the Unreal Engine 4.8 Release Notes page!

Feature Highlights

Grass Rendering and Procedural Foliage Systems

Grass Rendering and Procedural Foliage Systems

We've optimized our Grass Systems for use with large open worlds. Use it to produce huge amounts of grass and ground cover with temporal LOD cross-fading. We're also releasing an experimental preview of the procedural foliage system we used to paint foliage across our GDC 2015 Kite Demo.

Plugins Available in Marketplace

Plugins Available in Marketplace

We've partnered with Allegorithmic to provide our first plugin available in Marketplace. Download the plugin today, and look for more plugins from select partners in the future!

Post Processing Enhancements and Tools

Post Processing Enhancements and Tools

Major increase in accuracy of our Motion Blur, including morph target animations that can now generate motion blur. We've also updated our depth of field to be more physically-based, as well as added a new Tone Mapper to achieve more filmic look.

Multiplatform VR Support

Multiplatform VR Support

Support for all the latest VR hardware including Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, Steam VR and HTC Vive, Leap Motion, and Sony's Project Morpheus for PlayStation 4.

Network Replays

Network Replays

"Scrubbable" network replays with rewind support and live time scrubbing.

Asset Size Mapper

Asset Size Mapper

Visualize the memory footprint of game assets in an interactive tree map UI.

See the Full Release Notes