An Unreal Engine 4 tech demo video has been released by Epic Games, showing off the engine that will may power your Xbox 720, PS4 and next-generation PC games. In the video, the company’s Sr. Technical Artist, Alan Willard, takes you on a jargon-filled walkthrough of what Unreal 4 is capable of. Previously, the engine was only shown behind closed doors at GDC 2012.
Don’t worry if you can’t understand terms like “dynamically-lit particle systems” and “vector displacement fields.” The ten-minute video contains beautiful environments and special effects, including fire, ice, lava, smoke and, yes, next-generation lens flares. These visual effects help translate what Willard is saying into terms everyone can understand.
In addition to previewing the Unreal Engine 4 engine, this video goes into detail about how the new technology will make it easier for developers to create games. One way is by allowing programmers and designers to more easily edit while simulating the game. “I can make these kind of changes while I’m playing the game, while I’m in the editor, while I’m making changes to my environment and my tools and everything - all in real-time, as you can see.”
A revamped UI, a cleaner classification system and new tools like dynamic eye adaptation should help raise the bar for the development community. Moving through these realistic-looking rooms with pitch-perfect lighting is almost enough graphical eyecandy to make you wish Sony and Microsoft had announced the PS4 and Xbox 720 at E3 2012. Almost.
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