8 ms·

Unreal Engine 4.15 Released

116 points by richardboegli 10y ago

SurrealSoul 10y ago
Good stuff, I always enjoy the way they present their patch notes; even as someone with just the basics of unreal, it's always a good read.
richardboegli 10y ago
Ars Article: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/02/unreal-engine-4-15-switch-hdr-sli-details/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/02/unreal-engine-4-15-sw...
- dang 10y ago
  Thanks, we changed the URL to that from https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-4-15-released https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-4-15-release... because it seems to give more information. Can change it back if people object.
  - richardboegli 10y ago
    Please change it back. Ars article is just a high level summary and some of their older articles, where as the original article are the actual patch notes. Thanks.
    - dang 10y ago
      Ok, we did.
richardboegli 10y ago
It has support for Nintendo Switch
- idle_zealot 10y ago
  I'd hold off on excitement until 3rd party dev details are released.
kensai 10y ago
What I really like about Unreal Engine is its Unreal Assets, ie all those modifications that can be applied according to the field used. Good example: UnityCar, the packet that was used to build "My Summer Car".
- shinymark 10y ago
  Are you confusing the Unity and Unreal engines perhaps?
  - kensai 10y ago
    I am! Apologies.
arca_vorago 10y ago
This is a huge drop, great work Epic. I was excited enough to see the reduced mem consumption, blend space and animation features, etc, and then I got to the Linux patch notes and my jaw dropped, maybe I can finally get some work done on my nix boxes and not have to keep using windows as much. (Mostly crashes on certain screens like inability to bone edit, lack of launcher and marketplace on Linux version, etc) Compiling now
robeastham 10y ago
* Monoscopic far field rendering for mobile VR. Not sure how long this has been brewing, but I imagine it provides a significant performance boost. Anyone got any experience using it from the previews? Great work Epic!
- mrfusion 10y ago
  What is it?
  - hbosch 10y ago
    I believe it's when an object is so far in the distance that it doesn't require stereo rendering, just render it once.
    - mrfusion 10y ago
      What about the parallax effect though? Edit. I guess it would only apply in cases where there is nothing in the foreground?
      - pzone 10y ago
        The idea is that the parallax of two objects that are say 200 meters and 250 meters in the distance is negligible and can be ignored as long as you get the parallax correct for nearby objects. You might have to set your nearfield scale based on the contents of the scene. It wouldn't work if there were say, some buildings at 200 meters and then mountains a kilometer away. But if you're in a cathedral with some chandeliers high up on the ceiling, cheating to remove the parallax of the chandeliers will not detract from the VR effect.
      - microcolonel 10y ago
        They translate the renderbuffer for the other eye. It's far enough that the objects in the far pass don't have any significant parallax.
      - pmarreck 10y ago
mrfusion 10y ago
Any VR performance updates? (I made it halfway through )
lightedman 10y ago
Still no diff patching support? I'm really sick of having to re-download 40 gigs every other day when an early-access game based on Unreal decides it needs to update. Seriously, diff patching has been a thing for decades and we're in the age of artificially-restricted bandwidth allocation. If Unreal can't get with the times, then Unreal needs to go away and make room for engines that bother to use modern practices.
- Strom 10y ago
  What engines provide this diff patching?
  - trueSlav 10y ago
    None. They're no silly command line tools two people wrote in their spare time.
- microcolonel 10y ago
  That's strange, you could almost just use XDelta... Maybe they've never heard of it?
  - justin66 10y ago
    I expect they view this problem as something third party developers are capable of handling on their own.
    - microcolonel 10y ago
      Yeah, given how steam tends to fragment game files on disk, I figure Steam probably figures this stuff out for your game(unless we're talking about one of those games you can play before it's all there). If this is the case, I can see why they wouldn't bother adding it to the engine.
- trueSlav 10y ago
  There are no other better engines and what's more, there only two serious competitors out there. CryEngine and Unity. CryEngine has nowhere near the amount of documentation UE has (both official and unofficial) and investing time into learning to work with CryEngine is questionable since the company behind it may go bakrupt at any time and the skills you'll learn are not really usable outside of your project(s) since pretty much no one in the industry (except CIG and Warhorse) uses it. Unity is great for what it is, but it's not exactly the best choice as far as ambitious projects go.
mintplant 10y ago
Maybe this is a good place to ask: I have an Actor that rotates a child Static Mesh through a series of meshes (via "Set Static Mesh") to display a number 0-30. When I preview or launch the game, the mesh ends up rendering with some crummy-looking pixelation: https://www.spinda.net/files/pixelation2.PNG https://www.spinda.net/files/pixelation2.PNG https://www.spinda.net/files/pixelation1.PNG https://www.spinda.net/files/pixelation1.PNG So far I've tried: ensuring Settings->Resolution Scale->Engine Scalability is set to 100%; switching between Temporal AA, FXAA, and MSAA; disabling motion blur; restarting the editor multiple times; create a whole new project from the basic/minimal template and drop my object into an otherwise-empty scene. Nothing's gotten rid of this jaggedness.
- cma 10y ago
  Sounds like texture streaming. There is a way to disable it on a per-asset basis.
  - mintplant 10y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion. I just tried disabling texture streaming globally but unfortunately it didn't help. It's not a texture that's ending up pixelated but rather the edges of the 3D model, as if it's being rendered at some lower resolution and upscaled or anti-aliasing isn't being applied properly. Another example: https://i.imgur.com/tuvcAA8.png https://i.imgur.com/tuvcAA8.png - FXAA is turned on yet the edges are all jagged and pixelated.
    - cma 10y ago
      Looks like it has AA to me. You would be better with temporal AA, FXAA reduces jaggies but doesn't know enough of the underlying shape to really do anything like super sampling along subtle curves and stuff. For lines it can sometimes use enough surrounding context on screen to do a passable job. If you use the new forward renderer you can turn on MSAA and get super sampling along the edges too but it is still going to be there to some degree. 2xMSAA is only going to get you the equivalent of two bits of translucency information for each edge pixel.
redtuesday 10y ago
According to a recent video [1] some features from the new audio engine should have made it into 4.15, but I can't see them mentioned in the release notes. Didn't they make it in? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8o2xQcrb_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8o2xQcrb_E
- redtuesday 10y ago
  Found the answer to my own question: They made it into 4.15 but since they are experimental the features are not mentioned in the release notes. [1] [1] https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?136947-4-15-Released!&p=667538&viewfull=1#post667538 https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?136947-4-15-R...
ksec 10y ago
I am amazed, at the pace of Unreal Engine, the HUGE changelog and improvement with every release and constantly shipping it in a very timely manner. How is this even possible? Just trying to simply scroll through that page! Are there any other Software that gets the huge list of improvement every few months?

116 points by richardboegli 10y ago

Good stuff, I always enjoy the way they present their patch notes; even as someone with just the basics of unreal, it's always a good read.

richardboegli 10y ago

Ars Article: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/02/unreal-engine-4-15-switch-hdr-sli-details/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/02/unreal-engine-4-15-sw...

dang 10y ago
Thanks, we changed the URL to that from https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-4-15-released https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-4-15-release... because it seems to give more information. Can change it back if people object.
- richardboegli 10y ago
  Please change it back. Ars article is just a high level summary and some of their older articles, where as the original article are the actual patch notes. Thanks.
  - dang 10y ago
    Ok, we did.

richardboegli 10y ago

It has support for Nintendo Switch

idle_zealot 10y ago
I'd hold off on excitement until 3rd party dev details are released.

kensai 10y ago

What I really like about Unreal Engine is its Unreal Assets, ie all those modifications that can be applied according to the field used. Good example: UnityCar, the packet that was used to build "My Summer Car".

shinymark 10y ago
Are you confusing the Unity and Unreal engines perhaps?
- kensai 10y ago
  I am! Apologies.

arca_vorago 10y ago

This is a huge drop, great work Epic. I was excited enough to see the reduced mem consumption, blend space and animation features, etc, and then I got to the Linux patch notes and my jaw dropped, maybe I can finally get some work done on my nix boxes and not have to keep using windows as much. (Mostly crashes on certain screens like inability to bone edit, lack of launcher and marketplace on Linux version, etc) Compiling now

robeastham 10y ago

* Monoscopic far field rendering for mobile VR. Not sure how long this has been brewing, but I imagine it provides a significant performance boost. Anyone got any experience using it from the previews? Great work Epic!

mrfusion 10y ago
What is it?
- hbosch 10y ago
  I believe it's when an object is so far in the distance that it doesn't require stereo rendering, just render it once.
  - mrfusion 10y ago
    What about the parallax effect though? Edit. I guess it would only apply in cases where there is nothing in the foreground?
    - pzone 10y ago
      The idea is that the parallax of two objects that are say 200 meters and 250 meters in the distance is negligible and can be ignored as long as you get the parallax correct for nearby objects. You might have to set your nearfield scale based on the contents of the scene. It wouldn't work if there were say, some buildings at 200 meters and then mountains a kilometer away. But if you're in a cathedral with some chandeliers high up on the ceiling, cheating to remove the parallax of the chandeliers will not detract from the VR effect.
    - microcolonel 10y ago
      They translate the renderbuffer for the other eye. It's far enough that the objects in the far pass don't have any significant parallax.
    - pmarreck 10y ago

mrfusion 10y ago

Any VR performance updates? (I made it halfway through )

lightedman 10y ago

Still no diff patching support? I'm really sick of having to re-download 40 gigs every other day when an early-access game based on Unreal decides it needs to update. Seriously, diff patching has been a thing for decades and we're in the age of artificially-restricted bandwidth allocation. If Unreal can't get with the times, then Unreal needs to go away and make room for engines that bother to use modern practices.

Strom 10y ago
What engines provide this diff patching?
- trueSlav 10y ago
  None. They're no silly command line tools two people wrote in their spare time.
microcolonel 10y ago
That's strange, you could almost just use XDelta... Maybe they've never heard of it?
- justin66 10y ago
  I expect they view this problem as something third party developers are capable of handling on their own.
  - microcolonel 10y ago
    Yeah, given how steam tends to fragment game files on disk, I figure Steam probably figures this stuff out for your game(unless we're talking about one of those games you can play before it's all there). If this is the case, I can see why they wouldn't bother adding it to the engine.
trueSlav 10y ago
There are no other better engines and what's more, there only two serious competitors out there. CryEngine and Unity. CryEngine has nowhere near the amount of documentation UE has (both official and unofficial) and investing time into learning to work with CryEngine is questionable since the company behind it may go bakrupt at any time and the skills you'll learn are not really usable outside of your project(s) since pretty much no one in the industry (except CIG and Warhorse) uses it. Unity is great for what it is, but it's not exactly the best choice as far as ambitious projects go.

mintplant 10y ago

Maybe this is a good place to ask: I have an Actor that rotates a child Static Mesh through a series of meshes (via "Set Static Mesh") to display a number 0-30. When I preview or launch the game, the mesh ends up rendering with some crummy-looking pixelation: https://www.spinda.net/files/pixelation2.PNG https://www.spinda.net/files/pixelation2.PNG https://www.spinda.net/files/pixelation1.PNG https://www.spinda.net/files/pixelation1.PNG So far I've tried: ensuring Settings->Resolution Scale->Engine Scalability is set to 100%; switching between Temporal AA, FXAA, and MSAA; disabling motion blur; restarting the editor multiple times; create a whole new project from the basic/minimal template and drop my object into an otherwise-empty scene. Nothing's gotten rid of this jaggedness.

cma 10y ago
Sounds like texture streaming. There is a way to disable it on a per-asset basis.
- mintplant 10y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion. I just tried disabling texture streaming globally but unfortunately it didn't help. It's not a texture that's ending up pixelated but rather the edges of the 3D model, as if it's being rendered at some lower resolution and upscaled or anti-aliasing isn't being applied properly. Another example: https://i.imgur.com/tuvcAA8.png https://i.imgur.com/tuvcAA8.png - FXAA is turned on yet the edges are all jagged and pixelated.
  - cma 10y ago
    Looks like it has AA to me. You would be better with temporal AA, FXAA reduces jaggies but doesn't know enough of the underlying shape to really do anything like super sampling along subtle curves and stuff. For lines it can sometimes use enough surrounding context on screen to do a passable job. If you use the new forward renderer you can turn on MSAA and get super sampling along the edges too but it is still going to be there to some degree. 2xMSAA is only going to get you the equivalent of two bits of translucency information for each edge pixel.

redtuesday 10y ago

According to a recent video [1] some features from the new audio engine should have made it into 4.15, but I can't see them mentioned in the release notes. Didn't they make it in? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8o2xQcrb_E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8o2xQcrb_E

redtuesday 10y ago
Found the answer to my own question: They made it into 4.15 but since they are experimental the features are not mentioned in the release notes. [1] [1] https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?136947-4-15-Released!&p=667538&viewfull=1#post667538 https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?136947-4-15-R...

ksec 10y ago

I am amazed, at the pace of Unreal Engine, the HUGE changelog and improvement with every release and constantly shipping it in a very timely manner. How is this even possible? Just trying to simply scroll through that page! Are there any other Software that gets the huge list of improvement every few months?