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Unreal Engine (UE) is a
3D computer graphics 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...
game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software ...
developed by
Epic Games Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, ...
, first showcased in the 1998
first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the p ...
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 Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), edu ...
platforms. The latest generation, Unreal Engine 5, was launched in April 2022. Its source code is available on
GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, cont ...
after registering an account, and commercial use is granted based on a royalty model. Epic waives their royalties margin for games until developers have earned in revenue and the fee is waived if developers publish on the Epic Games Store. Epic has included features from acquired companies like Quixel in the engine, which is seen as helped by '' Fortnite'''s revenue.


History


First generation

The first-generation Unreal Engine was developed by Tim Sweeney, the founder of
Epic Games Epic Games, Inc. is an American video game and software developer and publisher based in Cary, North Carolina. The company was founded by Tim Sweeney as Potomac Computer Systems in 1991, originally located in his parents' house in Potomac, ...
. Having created editing tools for his shareware games ''
ZZT ''ZZT'' is a 1991 action-adventure puzzle video game and game creation system developed and published by Potomac Computer Systems for MS-DOS. It was later released as freeware in 1997. It is an early game allowing user-generated content using ob ...
'' (1991) and ''
Jill of the Jungle ''Jill of the Jungle'' is a trilogy of scrolling platform video games released in 1992 by Epic MegaGames. It was intended to rival platform games previously released as shareware by id Software and Apogee Software. The three episodes in the tr ...
'' (1992), Sweeney began writing the engine in 1995 for the production of a game that would later become a
first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the p ...
known as '' Unreal''. After years in development, it debuted with the game's release in 1998, although
MicroProse MicroProse is an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the ''Civilization'' and '' X-COM'' series. Most of their in ...
and Legend Entertainment had access to the technology much earlier, licensing it in 1996. According to an interview, Sweeney wrote 90 percent of the code in the engine, including the graphics, tools, and networking. At first, the engine relied completely on software rendering, meaning the graphics calculations were handled by the
CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, a ...
. 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 3dfx Interactive was an American technology company headquartered in San Jose, California, founded in 1994, that specialized in the manufacturing of 3D graphics processing units, and later, video cards. It was a pioneer in the field from the l ...
accelerators. While
OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...
and
Direct3D Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D uses hardware ...
were supported, they reported a slower performance compared to Glide due to their deficiency in texture management at the time. Sweeney particularly criticized the quality of OpenGL drivers for consumer hardware, describing them as "extremely problematic, buggy, and untested", and labeled the code in the implementation as "scary" as opposed to the simpler and cleaner support for Direct3D. With regard to audio, Epic employed the Galaxy Sound System, a software created in
assembly language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence b ...
that integrated both EAX and
Aureal Aureal Semiconductor Inc. was an American electronics manufacturer, best known throughout the mid-late 1990s for their PC sound card technologies including A3D and the Vortex (a line of audio ASICs.) The company was the reincarnation of the, at ...
technologies, and allowed the use of
tracker music Tracker may refer to: Arts and entertainment Fictional characters * Tracker (''G.I. Joe''), in the ''G.I. Joe'' universe * Tracker (''PAW Patrol''), in the animated television series ''PAW Patrol'' * Tracker Cameron, in the television series ' ...
, which gave level designers flexibility in how a game soundtrack was played at a specific point in maps.
Steve Polge Steven Polge is a game programmer, most noted for his work on Epic Games' '' Unreal'' series of games. Polge was hired by Epic in 1997 after creating the Reaper Bot, which is recognized by ''Guinness World Records'' as the first computer-controll ...
, the author of the Reaper Bots plugin for ''Quake'', programmed the
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...
system, based on knowledge he had gained at his previous employer IBM designing
router protocol A routing protocol specifies how routers communicate with each other to distribute information that enables them to select routes between nodes on a computer network. Routers perform the traffic directing functions on the Internet; data packets ...
s. According to Sweeney, the hardest part of the engine to program was the renderer, as he had to rewrite its core algorithm several times during development, though he found less "glamorous" the
infrastructure Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...
connecting all the subsystems. Despite requiring a significant personal effort, he said the engine was his favorite project at Epic, adding: "Writing the first Unreal Engine was a 3.5-year, breadth-first tour of hundreds of unique topics in software and was incredibly enlightening." Among its features were
collision detection Collision detection is the computational problem of detecting the intersection of two or more objects. Collision detection is a classic issue of computational geometry and has applications in various computing fields, primarily in computer grap ...
, colored lighting, and a limited form of
texture filtering In computer graphics, texture filtering or texture smoothing is the method used to determine the texture color for a texture mapped pixel, using the colors of nearby texels (pixels of the texture). There are two main categories of texture filterin ...
. It also integrated a level editor, UnrealEd, that had support for real-time
constructive solid geometry Constructive solid geometry (CSG; formerly called computational binary solid geometry) is a technique used in solid modeling. Constructive solid geometry allows a modeler to create a complex surface or object by using Boolean operators to comb ...
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 id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: game programmer, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer T ...
(developer of ''
Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (born 1934), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitcher * ...
'' and '' Quake''), co-founder
John Carmack John D. Carmack II (born August 20, 1970) is an American computer programmer and video game developer. He co-founded the video game company id Software and was the lead programmer of its 1990s games ''Commander Keen'', ''Wolfenstein 3D'', ''Doo ...
complimented the game for the use of
16-bit color High color graphics is a method of storing image information in a computer's memory such that each pixel is represented by two bytes. Usually the color is represented by all 16 bits, but some devices also support 15-bit high color. More recentl ...
and remarked its implementation of visual effects such as volumetric fog. "I doubt any important game will be designed with
8-bit color 8-bit color graphics are a method of storing image information in a computer's memory or in an image file, so that each pixel is represented by 8 bits (1 byte). The maximum number of colors that can be displayed at any one time is 256 or 28. 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 Geoff Keighley () is a Canadian video game journalist and television presenter. He was most known for hosting the video game show '' GameTrailers TV'', and for co-hosting the now-defunct '' G4tv.com''. Keighley is also a freelance writer whose ...
for ''
GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...
''. "Light blooms he 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." ''Unreal'' was noted for its graphical innovations, but Sweeney recognized in a 1999 interview with ''
Eurogamer ''Eurogamer'' is a British video game journalism website launched in 1999 and owned by alongside formed company Gamer Network. Its editor-in-chief is Martin Robinson. Since 2008, it is known for the formerly eponymous games trade fair EG ...
'' that many aspects of the game were unpolished, citing complaints from
gamers A gamer is a proactive hobbyist who plays interactive games, especially video games, tabletop role-playing games, and skill-based card games, and who plays for usually long periods of time. Some gamers are competitive, meaning they routinely ...
about its high system requirements and online gameplay issues. Epic addressed these points during the development of '' Unreal Tournament'' by incorporating several enhancements in the engine intended to optimize performance on low-end machines and improve the networking code, while also refining the artificial intelligence for
bots The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former Bri ...
to display coordination in team-based gamemodes such as
Capture the Flag Capture the flag (CTF) is a traditional outdoor sport where two or more teams each have a flag (or other markers) and the objective is to capture the other team's flag, located at the team's "base", and bring it safely back to their own base. ...
. Originally planned as an expansion pack for ''Unreal'', the game also came with increased image quality with the support for the S3TC compression algorithm, allowing for 24-bit high resolution textures without compromising performance. In addition to being available on
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
,
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
, Mac and
Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
, the engine was ported through ''Unreal Tournament'' to the
PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October 2000, in Europe on 24 November 2000, and in Australia on ...
and, with the help of Secret Level, to the
Dreamcast The is a home video game console released by Sega on November 27, 1998, in Japan; September 9, 1999, in North America; and October 14, 1999, in Europe. It was the first sixth-generation video game console, preceding Sony's PlayStation 2, Nint ...
. By late 1999, ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' indicated that there had been sixteen external projects using Epic's technology, including ''
Deus Ex ''Deus Ex'' is a series of role-playing video games, set during the mid 21st century. Focusing on the conflict between secretive factions who wish to control the world by proxy, and the effects of transhumanistic attitudes and technologies in a ...
'', ''
The Wheel of Time ''The Wheel of Time'' is a series of high fantasy novels by American author Robert Jordan, with Brandon Sanderson as a co-author for the final three novels. Originally planned as a six-book series, ''The Wheel of Time'' spans 14 volumes, in ad ...
'', and ''
Duke Nukem Forever ''Duke Nukem Forever'' is a 2011 first-person shooter game developed by Gearbox Software and published by 2K Games for Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. It is the fourth main installment in the ''Duke Nukem'' series and the sequel to '' D ...
'', the latter of which was originally based on the ''
Quake II ''Quake II'' is a 1997 first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Activision. It is the second installment of the ''Quake'' series, but not a direct sequel to '' Quake''. The game's storyline is continued in its ...
'' engine. Unlike id Software, whose engine business only offered the source code, Epic provided support for licensees and would get together with their leads to discuss improvements to its game development system, internally dubbed the Unreal Tech Advisory Group. While it cost around $3 million to produce and licenses for up to $350,000, Epic gave players the ability to modify its games with the incorporation of UnrealEd and a scripting language called UnrealScript, sparking a community of enthusiasts around a game engine built to be extensible over multiple generations of games.


Unreal Engine 2

In October 1998, IGN reported, based on an interview with affiliate ''Voodoo Extreme'', that Sweeney was doing research for his next-generation engine. With development starting a year later, the second version made its debut in 2002 with ''
America's Army ''America's Army'' is a series of first-person shooter video games developed and published by the U.S. Army, intended to inform, educate, and recruit prospective soldiers. Launched in 2002, the game was branded as a strategic communication devic ...
'', a free multiplayer shooter developed by the
U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
as a recruitment device. Soon after, Epic would release ''
Unreal Championship ''Unreal Championship'' is a first-person arena shooter video game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes, published by Infogrames, and released for the Xbox. Part of the ''Unreal'' franchise, ''Unreal Championship'' is the console vers ...
'' on the
Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by the ...
, one of the first games to utilize
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
's
Xbox Live The Xbox network, formerly and still sometimes branded as Xbox Live, is an online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft. It was first made available to the Xbox system on November 15, 2002. A ...
. Though based on its predecessor, this generation saw a notable advance in rendering terms as well as new improvements to the tool set. Capable of running levels nearly 100 times more detailed than those found in ''Unreal'', the engine integrated a variety of features, including a cinematic editing tool,
particle system A particle system is a technique in game physics, motion graphics, and computer graphics that uses many minute sprites, 3D models, or other graphic objects to simulate certain kinds of "fuzzy" phenomena, which are otherwise very hard to repr ...
s, export plug-ins for 3D Studio Max and
Maya Maya may refer to: Civilizations * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Maya language, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (Ethiopia), a popul ...
, and a
skeletal animation Skeletal animation or rigging is a technique in computer animation in which a character (or other articulated object) is represented in two parts: a surface representation used to draw the character (called the ''mesh'' or ''skin'') and a hierarc ...
system first showcased in the PlayStation 2 version of ''Unreal Tournament''. In addition, the user interface for UnrealEd was rewritten in C++ using the wxWidgets toolkit, which Sweeney said was the "best thing available" at the time. Epic used the Karma physics engine, a third-party software from UK-based studio Math Engine, to drive the physical simulations such as ragdoll player collisions and arbitrary
rigid body dynamics In the physical science of dynamics, rigid-body dynamics studies the movement of systems of interconnected bodies under the action of external forces. The assumption that the bodies are ''rigid'' (i.e. they do not deform under the action of ...
. With ''
Unreal Tournament 2004 ''Unreal Tournament 2004'' is a first-person arena shooter video game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. Part of the ''Unreal'' franchise, it is the third game in the '' Unreal Tournament'' series and the sequel to '' Unreal Tournam ...
'', vehicle-based gameplay was successfully implemented, enabling large-scale combat. While '' Unreal Tournament 2003'' had support for vehicle physics through the Karma engine, as demonstrated by a testmap with a "hastily-constructed vehicle", it wasn't until Psyonix created a modification out of Epic's base code that the game received fully coded vehicles. Impressed by their efforts, Epic decided to include it in its successor as a new game mode under the name Onslaught by hiring Psyonix as a contractor. Psyonix would later develop ''
Rocket League ''Rocket League'' is a vehicular soccer video game developed and published by Psyonix. The game was first released for Windows and PlayStation 4 in July 2015, with ports for Xbox One and Nintendo Switch being released later on. In June ...
'' before being acquired by Epic in 2019. A specialized version of UE2 called UE2X was designed for '' Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict'' on the original Xbox platform, featuring optimizations specific to that console. In March 2011,
Ubisoft Montreal Ubisoft Divertissements Inc., doing business as Ubisoft Montreal, is a Canadian video game developer and a studio of Ubisoft based in Montreal. The studio was founded in April 1997 as part of Ubisoft's growth into worldwide markets, with sub ...
revealed that UE2 was successfully running on the
Nintendo 3DS The is a handheld game console produced by Nintendo. It was announced in March 2010 and unveiled at E3 2010 as the successor to the Nintendo DS. The system features backward compatibility with Nintendo DS video games. As an eighth-generati ...
via ''
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell 3D ''Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory'' is a stealth game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Milan and released in March 2005 for the Xbox, PlayStation 2 (PS2), GameCube and Microsoft Windows. Handheld versions for the Nintendo DS, ...
''. "The 3DS is powerful, and we are able to run the Unreal Engine on this console, which is pretty impressive for a handheld machine, and the 3D doesn't affect the performance (thanks to my amazing programmers)," said Ubisoft.


Unreal Engine 3

Screenshots of Unreal Engine 3 were presented by July 2004, at which point the engine had already been in development for over 18 months. The engine was based on the first-generation, but contained new features. "The basic architectural decisions visible to programmers of an object-oriented design, a data-driven scripting approach, and a fairly modular approach to subsystems still remain
rom Unreal Engine 1 Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...
But the parts of the game that are really visible to gamers –the renderer, the physics system, the sound system, and the tools– are all visibly new and dramatically more powerful," said Sweeney. Unlike Unreal Engine 2, which still supported a fixed-function pipeline, Unreal Engine 3 was designed to take advantage of fully programmable shader hardware. All lighting and shadowing calculations were done per-pixel, instead of per-vertex. On the rendering side, Unreal Engine 3 provided support for a gamma-correct high-dynamic range renderer. The first games released using Unreal Engine 3 were ''
Gears of War ''Gears of War'' is a media franchise centered on a series of video games created by Epic Games, developed and managed by The Coalition, and owned and published by Xbox Game Studios. The franchise is best known for its third-person shooter v ...
'' for Xbox 360, and ''
RoboBlitz ''RoboBlitz'' is an indie puzzle action video game for Microsoft Windows through Steam and the Xbox 360 through Xbox Live Arcade. The game was developed by Naked Sky Entertainment and released on November 7, 2006. It was the first Unreal Engine ...
'' for Windows, which were both released on November 7, 2006. Initially, Unreal Engine 3 only supported Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 platforms, while iOS (first demonstrated with
Epic Citadel ''Epic Citadel'' is a tech demo developed by Epic Games to demonstrate the Unreal Engine 3 running on Apple iOS, within Adobe Flash Player Stage3D and using HTML5 WebGL technologies. It was also released for Android on January 29, 2013. The a ...
) and Android were added later in 2010, with ''
Infinity Blade ''Infinity Blade'' is an action role-playing game developed by Chair Entertainment and Epic Games and released through the Apple App Store on December 9, 2010. It was the first iOS video game to run on the Unreal Engine. In the game, the unname ...
'' being the first iOS title and ''
Dungeon Defenders ''Dungeon Defenders'' is a hybrid multiplayer video game developed by Trendy Entertainment that combines the genres of tower defense and action role-playing game. It is based on a showcase of Unreal Engine 3 named ''Dungeon Defense''. The ...
'' the first Android title. In 2011, it was announced that the engine would support Adobe Flash Player 11 through the Stage 3D hardware-accelerated APIs and that it was being used in two
Wii U The Wii U ( ) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo as the successor to the Wii. Released in late 2012, it is the first eighth-generation video game console and competed with Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4. ...
games, '' Batman: Arkham City'' and '' Aliens: Colonial Marines''. In 2013, Epic teamed-up with
Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, ...
to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the web; using the
asm.js asm.js is a subset of JavaScript designed to allow computer software written in languages such as C to be run as web applications while maintaining performance characteristics considerably better than standard JavaScript, which is the typical l ...
sublanguage and
Emscripten Emscripten is an LLVM/ Clang-based compiler that compiles C and C++ source code to WebAssembly (or to a subset of JavaScript known as asm.js, its original compilation target before the advent of WebAssembly in 2017), primarily for execution in ...
compiler, they were able to port the engine in four days. Throughout the lifetime of UE3, significant updates were incorporated, including improved destructible environments,
soft body dynamics Soft-body dynamics is a field of computer graphics that focuses on visually realistic physical simulations of the motion and properties of deformable objects (or ''soft bodies''). The applications are mostly in video games and films. Unlike in si ...
, large
crowd simulation Crowd simulation is the process of simulating the movement (or ) of a large number of entities or characters. It is commonly used to create virtual scenes for visual media like films and video games, and is also used in crisis training, architect ...
, iOS functionality,
Steamworks Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront by Valve. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their games, and expanded to distributing and offering third ...
integration, a real-time global illumination solution, and stereoscopic 3D on Xbox 360 via TriOviz for Games Technology.
DirectX 11 Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", ...
support was demonstrated with the ''Samaritan'' demo, which was unveiled at the 2011 Game Developers Conference and built by Epic Games in a close partnership with
Nvidia Nvidia CorporationOfficially written as NVIDIA and stylized in its logo as VIDIA with the lowercase "n" the same height as the uppercase "VIDIA"; formerly stylized as VIDIA with a large italicized lowercase "n" on products from the mid 1990s to ...
, with engineers working around the country to push real-time graphics to a new high point.


Unreal Development Kit

While Unreal Engine 3 was quite open for modders to work with, the ability to publish and sell games meant using UE3 was restricted to licenses of the engine. However, in November 2009, Epic released a free version of UE3's SDK, called the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), that is available to the general public. In December 2010, the kit was updated to include support for creating iOS games and apps.
OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
compatibility followed in the September 2011 release.


Unreal Engine 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 ''Computer and Video Games'' (also known as ''CVG'', ''Computer & Video Games'', ''C&VG'', ''Computer + Video Games'', or ''C+VG'') was a UK-based video game magazine, published in its original form between 1981 and 2004. Its offshoot website w ...
''. Speaking in an interview in early 2008, Sweeney stated that he was basically the only person working on the engine, though he affirmed his
research and development Research and development (R&D or R+D), known in Europe as research and technological development (RTD), is the set of innovative activities undertaken by corporations or governments in developing new services or products, and improving existi ...
department would start to expand later that year, designing the engine in parallel with the development of Unreal Engine 3. "In some way, we resemble a hardware company with our generational development of technology. We are going to have a team developing Unreal Engine 3 for years to come and a team ramping up on Unreal Engine 4. And then, as the next-gen transition begins, we will be moving everybody to that. We actually are doing parallel development for multiple generations concurrently," he said. In February 2012, Rein stated "people are going to be shocked later this year when they see Unreal Engine 4"; Epic unveiled UE4 to limited attendees at the 2012
Game Developers Conference The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tuto ...
, and a video of the engine being demonstrated by technical artist Alan Willard was released to the public on June 7, 2012, via GameTrailers TV. One of the major features planned for UE4 was real-time
global illumination Global illumination (GI), or indirect illumination, is a group of algorithms used in 3D computer graphics that are meant to add more realistic lighting to 3D scenes. Such algorithms take into account not only the light that comes directly from ...
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 The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tuto ...
(GDC), Epic Games released Unreal Engine 4 through a new licensing model. For a monthly subscription at , developers were given access to the full version of the engine, including the C++ source code, which could be downloaded via
GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, cont ...
. Any released product was charged with a 5% royalty of gross revenues. The first game released using Unreal Engine 4 was ''
Daylight Daylight is the combination of all direct and indirect sunlight during the daytime. This includes direct sunlight, diffuse sky radiation, and (often) both of these reflected by Earth and terrestrial objects, like landforms and buildings. Sunligh ...
'', developed with early access to the engine and released on April 29, 2014. On September 4, 2014, Epic released Unreal Engine 4 to schools and universities for free, including personal copies for students enrolled in accredited video game development, computer science, art, architecture, simulation, and visualization programs. Epic opened an Unreal Engine
Marketplace A marketplace or market place is a location where people regularly gather for the purchase and sale of provisions, livestock, and other goods. In different parts of the world, a marketplace may be described as a '' souk'' (from the Arabic), ' ...
for acquiring game assets. On February 19, 2015, Epic launched ''Unreal Dev Grants'', a $5 million development fund aiming to provide grants to creative projects using Unreal Engine 4. In March 2015, Epic released Unreal Engine 4, along with all future updates, for free for all users. In exchange, Epic established a selective royalty schedule, asking for 5% of revenue for products that make more than $3,000 per quarter. Sweeney stated that when they moved to the subscription model in 2014, use of Unreal grew by 10 times and through many smaller developers, and believed that they would draw even more uses through this new pricing scheme. In an attempt to attract Unreal Engine developers,
Oculus VR Reality Labs is a business of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) that produces virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware and software, including virtual reality headsets such as Quest, and online platforms such as Horizon ...
announced in October 2016 that it will pay royalty fees for all Unreal-powered
Oculus Rift Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a division of Meta Platforms, released on March 28, 2016. In 2012 Oculus initiated a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Rift's development, af ...
titles published on their store for up to the first $5 million of gross revenue per game. 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. With the opening of the Epic Games Store in December 2018, Epic will not charge the 5% revenue fee on games that use the Unreal Engine and released through the Epic Games Stores, absorbing that cost as part of the base 12% cut Epic is taking to cover other costs. Effective May 13, 2020, and retroactive to January 1, 2020, the royalty exemption amount is increased to US$1,000,000 in lifetime gross revenue per title.


Supported platforms

Unreal Engine 4 officially supports the following platforms as of 4.27 (August 2021): *
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
,
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
,
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
, * iOS, Android *
Nintendo Switch The is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a tablet that can either be docked for use as a home console or used as a portable device, making it a ...
,
PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 i ...
,
Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...
,
PlayStation 5 The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, it was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North ...
,
Xbox Series X/S The Xbox Series X/S are home video game consoles developed by Microsoft. They were both released on November 10, 2020, as the fourth generation Xbox, succeeding the Xbox One. Along with Sony's PlayStation 5, also released in November 202 ...
, and Stadia. *
Magic Leap Magic Leap, Inc. is an American technology company that released a head-mounted virtual retinal display, called ''Magic Leap One'', which superimposes 3D computer-generated imagery over real world objects, by "projecting a digital light field ...
,
HTC Vive VIVE, sometimes referred to as HTC Vive, is a virtual reality brand of HTC Corporation. It consists of hardware like its titular virtual reality headsets and accessories, virtual reality software and services, and initiatives that promote appl ...
,
Oculus Oculus (a term from Latin ''oculus'', meaning 'eye'), may refer to the following Architecture * Oculus (architecture), a circular opening in the centre of a dome or in a wall Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Oculus'' (film), a 2013 American s ...
,
PlayStation VR The PlayStation VR (PS VR, known by its code name Project Morpheus during development) is a virtual reality headset developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, which was released in October 2016. It is fully functional with the PlayStation 4 an ...
, OSVR,
Samsung Gear VR The Samsung Gear VR is a virtual reality headset developed by Samsung Electronics, in collaboration with Oculus VR, and manufactured by Samsung. The headset was released on November 27, 2015. When in use, a compatible Samsung Galaxy device acts ...
, and HoloLens 2. It formerly officially supported Google Daydream and
HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...
.


Unreal Engine 5

Unreal Engine 5 was revealed on May 13, 2020, supporting all existing systems including the next-generation consoles
PlayStation 5 The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, it was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North ...
and
Xbox Series X/S The Xbox Series X/S are home video game consoles developed by Microsoft. They were both released on November 10, 2020, as the fourth generation Xbox, succeeding the Xbox One. Along with Sony's PlayStation 5, also released in November 202 ...
. Work on the engine started about two years prior to its announcement. It was released in early access on May 26, 2021, and formally launched for developers on April 5, 2022. One of its major features is Nanite, an engine that allows for high-detailed photographic source material to be imported into games. The Nanite virtualized geometry technology allows Epic to take advantage of its past acquisition of Quixel, the world's largest
photogrammetry Photogrammetry is the science and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant ima ...
library as of 2019. The goal of Unreal Engine 5 was to make it as easy as possible for developers to create detailed game worlds without having to spend excessive time on creating new detailed assets. Nanite can import nearly any other pre-existing three-dimension representation of objects and environments, including ZBrush and
CAD Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...
models, enabling the use of film-quality assets. Nanite automatically handles the levels of detail (LODs) of these imported objects appropriate to the target platform and draw distance, a task that an artist would have had to perform otherwise. Lumen is another component described as a "fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes". Lumen eliminates the need for artists and developers to craft a lightmap for a given scene, but instead calculates light reflections and shadows on the fly, thus allowing for real-time behavior of light sources. Virtual Shadow Maps is another component added in Unreal Engine 5 described as "a new shadow mapping method used to deliver consistent, high-resolution shadowing that works with film-quality assets and large, dynamically lit open worlds". Virtual Shadow Maps differs from the common shadow map implementation in its extremely high resolution, more detailed shadows, and the lack of shadows popping in and out which can be found in the more common shadow maps technique due to shadow cascades. Additional components include Niagara for fluid and particle dynamics and Chaos for a physics engine. With potentially tens of billions of polygons present on a single screen at
4K resolution 4K resolution refers to a horizontal display resolution of approximately 4,000 pixels. Digital television and digital cinematography commonly use several different 4K resolutions. In television and consumer media, 38402160 (4K UHD) is the domi ...
, Epic also developed the Unreal Engine 5 to take advantage of the upcoming high-speed storage solutions with the next-generation console hardware that will use a mix of RAM and custom
solid-state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is a ...
s. Epic had worked closely with Sony in optimizing Unreal Engine 5 for the PlayStation 5, with Epic collaborating with Sony on the console's storage architecture. To demonstrate the ease of creating a detailed world with minimal effort, the May 2020 reveal of the engine showcased a demo called "Lumen in the Land of Nanite" running on a PlayStation 5 that was built mostly by pulling assets from the Quixel library and using the Nanite, Lumen, and other Unreal Engine 5 components to create a photorealistic cave setting that could be explored. Epic affirmed that Unreal Engine 5 would be fully supported on the Xbox Series X as well, but had been focused on the PlayStation 5 during the announcement as a result of their work with Sony in the years prior. Epic plans to use '' Fortnite'' as a testbed for Unreal Engine 5 to showcase what the engine can do to the industry, with the game brought to use Unreal Engine 5 in December 2021.
Ninja Theory Ninja Theory Limited is a first-party British video game development studio based in Cambridge, England. Notable games it has developed include ''Kung Fu Chaos'', ''Heavenly Sword'', '' Enslaved: Odyssey to the West'', '' DmC: Devil May Cry ...
's '' Senua's Saga: Hellblade II'' will also be one of the first games to use Unreal Engine 5. ''
The Matrix Awakens ''The Matrix Awakens'' is a 2021 open world video game and technology demonstration developed by Epic Games using Unreal Engine 5 in partnership with Warner Bros. Pictures, The Coalition, Wētā FX, Evil Eye Pictures, SideFX, and others for ...
'', a tie-in experience ahead of the release of ''
The Matrix Resurrections ''The Matrix Resurrections'' is a 2021 American science fiction action film produced, co-written, and directed by Lana Wachowski, and being the first in ''Matrix'' franchise to be directed solely by Lana, without her sister, Lilly. It is the s ...
'', was developed by Epic to be a further demonstration of Unreal Engine 5 along with other technology that they had acquired over 2020 and 2021, including their MetaHuman Creator developed and integrated into Unreal Engine 5 with technology from 3Lateral, Cubic Motion, and Quixel. Additional features planned for Unreal Engine 5 come from Epic's acquisitions and partnerships. The MetaHuman Creator is a project based on technology from three companies acquired by Epic—3Lateral, Cubic Motion, and Quixel—to allow developers to quickly create realistic human characters that can then be exported for use within Unreal. Through partnership with Cesium, Epic plans to offer a free plugin to provide 3D
geospatial Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth (a geographic location or geographic position). It is also ca ...
data for Unreal users, allowing them to recreate any part of the mapped surface of Earth. Epic will include
RealityCapture RealityCapture (RC) is photogrammetry software for creating 3D models out of unordered photographs (terrestrial and/or aerial) or laser scans without seams. The most common fields of its current use are cultural heritage (art and architecture), ...
, a product it acquired with its acquisition of Capturing Reality that can generate 3D models of any object from a collection of photographs taken of it from multiple angles, and the various
middleware Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement ...
tools offered by Epic Game Tools. Unreal Engine 5 will retain the current royalty model, with developers returning 5% of gross revenues to Epic Games, though this fee is waived for those that release their games on the Epic Games Store. Further, Epic announced alongside Unreal Engine 5 that they will not take any fee from games using any version of Unreal Engine for the first in gross revenue, retroactive to January 1, 2020.


Scripting


UnrealScript

UnrealScript (often abbreviated to UScript) was Unreal Engine's native
scripting language A scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. Scripting languages are usually interpreted at runtime rather than compiled. A scripting ...
used for authoring game code and
gameplay Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and pl ...
events before the release of Unreal Engine 4. The language was designed for simple,
high-level High-level and low-level, as technical terms, are used to classify, describe and point to specific goals of a systematic operation; and are applied in a wide range of contexts, such as, for instance, in domains as widely varied as computer scien ...
game programming Game programming, a subset of game development, is the software development of video games. Game programming requires substantial skill in software engineering and computer programming in a given language, as well as specialization in one or mor ...
. UnrealScript was programmed by Sweeney, who also created an earlier game scripting language, ZZT-OOP. ''
Deus Ex ''Deus Ex'' is a series of role-playing video games, set during the mid 21st century. Focusing on the conflict between secretive factions who wish to control the world by proxy, and the effects of transhumanistic attitudes and technologies in a ...
'' lead programmer Chris Norden described it as "super flexible" but noted its low execution speed. Similar to
Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...
, UnrealScript was
object-oriented Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...
without
multiple inheritance Multiple inheritance is a feature of some object-oriented computer programming languages in which an object or class can inherit features from more than one parent object or parent class. It is distinct from single inheritance, where an object or ...
(classes all inherit from a common Object class), and classes were defined in individual files named for the class they define. Unlike Java, UnrealScript did not have object wrappers for primitive types. Interfaces were only supported in Unreal Engine generation 3 and a few Unreal Engine 2 games. UnrealScript supported
operator overloading In computer programming, operator overloading, sometimes termed ''operator ad hoc polymorphism'', is a specific case of polymorphism, where different operators have different implementations depending on their arguments. Operator overloading i ...
, but not
method overloading In some programming languages, function overloading or method overloading is the ability to create multiple functions of the same name with different implementations. Calls to an overloaded function will run a specific implementation of that ...
, except for optional parameters. At the 2012 Game Developers Conference, Epic announced that UnrealScript was being removed from Unreal Engine 4 in favor of C++. Visual scripting would be supported by the Blueprints Visual Scripting system, a replacement for the earlier Kismet visual scripting system.


Verse

Verse is the new scripting language for Unreal Engine, expected to be first implemented in '' Fortnite''.
Simon Peyton Jones Simon Peyton Jones (born 18 January 1958) is a British computer scientist who researches the implementation and applications of functional programming languages, particularly lazy functional programming. Education Peyton Jones graduated f ...
, known for his contributions to the Haskell programming language, joined Epic Games in December 2021 as Engineering Fellow to work on Verse along with long-time colleague
Lennart Augustsson Lennart Augustsson is a Swedish computer scientist. He was previously a lecturer at the Computing Science Department at Chalmers University of Technology. His research field is functional programming and implementations of functional languages. ...
and others. Presented by Peyton at Haskell eXchange 2022, Verse is planned to be released sometime in 2023 as an open language for the
metaverse In science fiction, the "metaverse" is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal, and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. In colloquial usa ...
.


Marketplace

With Unreal Engine 4, Epic opened the Unreal Engine Marketplace in September 2014. The Marketplace is a digital storefront that allows content creators and developers to provide art assets, models, sounds, environments, code snippets, and other features that others could purchase, along with tutorials and other guides. Some content is provided for free by Epic, including previously offered Unreal assets and tutorials. Prior to July 2018, Epic took a 30% share of the sales but due to the success of Unreal and ''
Fortnite Battle Royale ''Fortnite Battle Royale'' is a free-to-play battle royale video game developed and published by Epic Games. It is a companion game to '' Fortnite: Save the World'', a cooperative survival game with construction elements. It was initially ...
'', Epic retroactively reduced its take to 12%.


Usage


Video games

The Unreal Engine was originally designed to be used as the underlying technology for video games. The engine is used in a number of high-profile game titles with high graphics capabilities, including ''
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds ''PUBG: Battlegrounds'' (previously known as ''PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds'') is a battle royale game developed by PUBG Studios and published by Krafton. The game, which was inspired by the Japanese film '' Battle Royale'' (2000), is based ...
'', ''
Final Fantasy VII Remake is a 2020 action role-playing game developed and published by Square Enix. It is the first in a planned trilogy of games remaking the 1997 PlayStation game ''Final Fantasy VII''. Set in the dystopian cyberpunk metropolis of Midgar, players co ...
'', '' Valorant'' and '' Yoshi’s Crafted World,'' in addition to games developed by Epic, including ''Gears of War'' and ''Fortnite''.


Film and television

The Unreal Engine has found use in film making to create virtual sets that can track with a camera's motion around actors and objects and be rendered in real time to large LED screens and atmospheric lighting systems. This allows for real-time composition of shots, immediate editing of the virtual sets as needed, and the ability to shoot multiple scenes within a short period by just changing the virtual world behind the actors. The overall appearance was recognized to appear more natural than typical
chromakey Chroma key compositing, or chroma keying, is a visual-effects and post-production technique for compositing (layering) two images or video streams together based on colour hues ( chroma range). The technique has been used in many fields to r ...
effects. Among the productions to use these technologies were the television series ''
The Mandalorian ''The Mandalorian'' is an American space Western television series created by Jon Favreau for the streaming service Disney+. It is the first live-action series in the ''Star Wars'' franchise, beginning five years after the events of '' Retur ...
'' and ''
Westworld ''Westworld'' is an American science fiction-thriller media franchise that began with the 1973 film ''Westworld'', written and directed by Michael Crichton. The film depicts a technologically advanced Wild-West-themed amusement park populate ...
''.
Jon Favreau Jonathan Kolia Favreau (; born October 19, 1966) is an American actor and filmmaker. As an actor, Favreau has appeared in films such as '' Rudy'' (1993), '' PCU'' (1994), '' Swingers'' (1996), ''Very Bad Things'' (1998), '' Deep Impact'' (1998) ...
and
Lucasfilm Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC is an American film and television production company and a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, which is a business segment of The Walt Disney Company. The studio is best known for creating and producing the '' Star Wars'' and ...
's
Industrial Light & Magic Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) is an American motion picture visual effects company that was founded on May 26, 1975 by George Lucas. It is a division of the film production company Lucasfilm, which Lucas founded, and was created when he began pr ...
division worked with Epic in developing their
StageCraft Stagecraft is a technical aspect of theatrical, film, and video production. It includes constructing and rigging scenery; hanging and focusing of lighting; design and procurement of costumes; make-up; stage management; audio engineering; a ...
technology for ''The Mandalorian'', based on a similar approach Favreau had used in ''
The Lion King ''The Lion King'' is a 1994 American animated musical drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 32nd Disney animated feature film and the fifth produced during the Disney Renaissance ...
''. Favreau then shared this technology approach with
Jonathan Nolan Jonathan Nolan (born 6 June 1976) is a British-American screenwriter, producer, director and author. He is the creator of the CBS science fiction series ''Person of Interest'' (2011–2016) and co-creator of the HBO science fiction western s ...
and Lisa Joy, the producers for ''Westworld''. The show had already looked at the use of virtual sets before and had some technology established, but integrated the use of Unreal Engine as with StageCraft for its third season. Orca Studios, a Spanish-based company, has been working with Epic to establish multiple studios for virtual filming similar to the StageCraft approach with Unreal Engine providing the virtual sets, particularly during the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
, which restricted travel. In January 2021, ''
Deadline Hollywood ''Deadline Hollywood'', commonly known as ''Deadline'' and also referred to as ''Deadline.com'', is an online news site founded as the news blog ''Deadline Hollywood Daily'' by Nikki Finke in 2006. The site is updated several times a day, wi ...
'' announced that Epic was using part of its Epic MegaGrants to back for the first time an animated feature film, ''Gilgamesh'', to be produced fully in Unreal Engine by animation studios Hook Up, DuermeVela and FilmSharks. As part of an extension of its MegaGrants, Epic also funded 45 additional projects since around 2020 for making movies and short films in the Unreal Engine.


Other uses

Unreal Engine has also been used by non-creative fields due to its availability and feature sets. It has been used as a basis for a virtual reality tool to explore pharmaceutical drug molecules in collaboration with other researchers, as a virtual environment to explore and design new buildings and automobiles, and used for cable news networks to support real-time graphics. In March 2012, Epic Games announced a partnership with
Virtual Heroes Virtual Heroes, Inc. is a developer of serious games in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. It was founded in 2004. Virtual Heroes' initial projects focused on creating new technology and content for the U.S. Army game ''America's Army''. T ...
of Applied Research Associates to launch ''Unreal Government Network'', a program that handles Unreal Engine licenses for government agencies. Several projects originated with this support agreement, including an anaesthesiology training software for
U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...
physicians, a multiplayer crime scene simulation developed by the
FBI Academy The FBI Academy is the Federal Bureau of Investigation's law enforcement training and research center near the town of Quantico in Stafford County, Virginia. Operated by the bureau's Training Division, it was first opened for use on May 7, 19 ...
, and various applications for the
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) is an organization within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence responsible for leading research to overcome difficult challenges relevant to the United States Intellige ...
with the aim to help intelligence analysts recognize and mitigate cognitive biases that might affect their work. Similarly, the
DHS Science and Technology Directorate The Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is a component within the United States Department of Homeland Security. DHS-S&T serves as the research and development arm of the Department as it fulfills its national security mission. The Science a ...
and the U.S. Army's
Training and Doctrine Command The United States Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) is a major command of the United States Army headquartered at Fort Eustis, Virginia. It is charged with overseeing training of Army forces and the development of operational doctrine. ...
and
Research Laboratory A research institute, research centre, research center or research organization, is an establishment founded for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often im ...
employed the engine to develop a platform to train
first responders A first responder is a person with specialized training who is among the first to arrive and provide assistance or incident resolution at the scene of an emergency, such as an accident, disaster, medical emergency, structure fire, crime, or terr ...
titled ''Enhanced Dynamic Geo-Social Environment'' (EDGE).


Awards

The engine has received numerous awards: * Technology & Engineering Emmy Award from the
National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) is an American professional service organization founded in 1955 for "the advancement of the arts and sciences of television and the promotion of creative leadership for artistic, edu ...
(NATAS) for "3D Engine Software for the Production of Animation" in 2018 *
Primetime Engineering Emmy Award The Primetime Engineering Emmy Awards, or Engineering Emmys, are one of two sets of Emmy Awards that are presented for outstanding achievement in engineering development in the television industry. The Primetime Engineering Emmys are presented by ...
from the Television Academy for exceptional developments in broadcast technology in 2020 *
Annie Award The Annie Awards are accolades which the Los Angeles branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood, has presented each year since 1972 to recognize excellence in animation shown in cinema and television. Originally de ...
from
ASIFA-Hollywood ASIFA-Hollywood, an American non-profit organization in Los Angeles, California, United States, is a branch member of the "Association Internationale du Film d'Animation" or "ASIFA" (the International Animated Film Association). Its purpose is to ...
for technical advancement in animation in 2021 * ''
Game Developer Magazine ''Game Developer'' was a magazine for video game creators, originally started in March 1994 by Miller Freeman, Inc as quarterly, later bimonthly, and finally monthly. In each issue, industry leaders and experts shared technical solutions, reviewe ...
'' Front Line Award for Best Game Engine for 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 * Develop Industry Excellence Award for Best Engine for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2016, 2017, and 2018 * ''
Guinness World Record ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a reference book published annually, listing world ...
'' for most successful video game engine


Legal aspects

The state of the Unreal Engine came up in Epic's 2020 legal action against Apple Inc. claiming anticompetitive behavior in Apple's iOS App Store. Epic had uploaded a version of '' Fortnite'' that violated Apple's App Store allowances. Apple, in response, removed the ''Fortnite'' app and later threatened to terminate Epic's developer accounts which would have prevented Epic from updating the Unreal Engine for iOS and macOS. The court agreed to grant Epic a permanent injunction against Apple to prevent Apple from taking this step, since the court agreed that would impact numerous third-party developers that rely on the Unreal Engine.


See also

*
Procedural generation In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, typically through a combination of human-generated assets and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power. In ...
*
Make Something Unreal Make Something Unreal, also known as $1,000,000 Make Something Unreal Contest and Make Something Unreal Live, is a series of video game development competitions organised by Epic Games which began in 2004, with subsequent competitions in 2008, 2012 ...
*
Epic Citadel ''Epic Citadel'' is a tech demo developed by Epic Games to demonstrate the Unreal Engine 3 running on Apple iOS, within Adobe Flash Player Stage3D and using HTML5 WebGL technologies. It was also released for Android on January 29, 2013. The a ...
*
The Matrix Awakens ''The Matrix Awakens'' is a 2021 open world video game and technology demonstration developed by Epic Games using Unreal Engine 5 in partnership with Warner Bros. Pictures, The Coalition, Wētā FX, Evil Eye Pictures, SideFX, and others for ...
*
On-set virtual production On-set virtual production (OSVP) or also known as virtual production or virtual studio is a technology for television and film production in which LED panels are used as a backdrop for a set, on which video or computer generated imagery can be di ...


References


Further reading

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *


External links

* {{Video game engines , state=autocollapse 1998 software 3D graphics software Articles containing video clips Epic Games Game engines for Linux Game engines that support Mantle (API) Game engines that support Vulkan (API) IPhone video game engines Unreal S Unreal (video game series) Video game engines Video game IDE Virtual reality