Epic has announced today that the newest version of their game development engine, Unreal Engine 4, now officially supports Google’s new Android-powered Virtual Reality platform Daydream. The support comes in the form of an official plugin which is actually now available for developers to grab and use to make Daydream games already.
For those of you who missed our coverage of Google Daydream, this is the Virtual Reality platform Google was rumored to be announcing at this week’s Google I/O conference. The platform itself is both hardware and software, with the headset being similar to the Samsung Gear VR in that it will have new Android phones clipping into it and running Android VR Mode. Unlike the Gear VR which is limited to Samsung-only phones, Daydream will be available for any new Android phone that meets the requirements on both the hardware front and the software one, needing to run Android N.
At Epic our mission is to give developers the very best tools for building immersive and visually impressive experiences with great performance on every platform we support. We have been creating VR experiences for many years now that not only push visual fidelity but what’s possible in terms of input, interaction, characters and gameplay mechanics. Every project we work on extends the capabilities of Unreal Engine, and we pass these improvements to developers on a daily basis. Today we’re proud to be part of this new chapter in VR history. – Kim Libreri, Epic Games CTO
If you’re a developer looking to snap up this new plugin, it is available right now over on Epic Games’ GitHub, but will officially be part of the next update for Unreal Engine 4 (which would be version 4.1.1). All the documentation for this plugin is also available now. Unity3D users, have no fear, Daydream support is also available as well, more on that later today.
Source: Unreal Engine 4 Blog | Google
