Epic Games ships Daydream plugin for Unreal Engine 4
Epic Games has released a new Unreal Engine 4 plugin for Daydream, Google’s new VR platform.
The announcement further extends the options for creating VR content in Unreal Engine, following the rollout of the new, work-in-progress VR Editor in Unreal Engine 4.11 last month.
Daydream: a smarter successor to Cardboard
Announced earlier this week, Daydream is a successor to Google’s Cardboard system. Like Cardboard, it works on mobile devices, meaning that users will be able to view VR content on their smartphones.
Unlike Cardboard, it won’t work on any phone, though: it’s built on top of Android N, and requires specific hardware components, including sensors and screens. The Verge has a summary here and analysis here.
Daydream-ready phones, along with headsets and controllers to use with them, should be available this fall.
UE4 plugin: available now as source code, with binaries in June
Unreal Engine support is also there right out of the box, with Epic announcing its new Daydream plugin for UE4 at Google’s I/O 2016 event, alongside Daydream itself.
The plugin, which was co-developed by game studio Hardsuit Labs, is currently available as source code on the Unreal Engine GitHub repo, with binaries coming with the release of Unreal Engine 4.12 on 1 June.
Epic’s blog post doesn’t really discuss its feature set, but you can find the online documentation here.
Pricing and availability
Unreal Engine is available for 64-bit Windows 7+ and Mac OS X 10.9.2+. Use of the editor is free, but Epic takes 5% of gross revenues beyond the first $3,000 per quarter for any product you release commercially.
Read more about Daydream support in Unreal Engine on Epic Games’ blog