GamingBolt spoke to Epic Games’ Unreal Engine general manager Ray Davis on the potential of the engine, especially as graphics APIs like DirectX 12 arrive in the coming months; graphics parity across both consoles with UE4; and of course, the amazing tech demo from GDC 2015.

"It’s fantastic that developers have access to so many development options these days, and I appreciate that Unity has helped introduce many new people to game development."

Rashid K. Sayed: Unreal Engine 4 at GDC 2015 blew away our perceptions in terms of what was possible in real-time. What can you tell us about the amount of work that’s been put into optimizing the engine for current gen consoles and future technology?

Ray Davis: It takes tremendous effort to achieve photorealism at high framerates, and although we’re quite happy with the progress we were able to make by GDC 2015, we also understand there’s a mountain of work ahead of us. We believe there’s still a lot of power left to take advantage of with modern gaming platforms, and one of our focuses this year is making sure UE4 is helping developers raise the bar in terms of visual fidelity.

Rashid K. Sayed: Unreal Engine has been credited for its scalability and sheer platform support but Unreal Engine 4 seemingly ups that by providing high quality visuals on mobiles, consoles and VR alike. How does Epic continue to achieve this feat?

Ray Davis: Achieving good scalability across multiple platforms requires architectural considerations upfront along with consistent dedication from our engineering team with every new feature we add. It’s something we’re still learning how to improve upon with every new engine release, and the constant influx of interesting new platforms (especially around VR!) keeps us on our toes. Fortunately there’s a high degree of overlap in functionality for many of these platforms, so we’re able to build abstraction layers that allow us to maintain consistent workflows and remove much of the workload for developers when it comes to launching their projects on numerous devices.

Rashid K. Sayed: What are your thoughts on the rise of Unity, especially with Unity 5 set to go head to head with Unreal Engine 4 in terms of platform support and graphical features?

Ray Davis: It’s fantastic that developers have access to so many development options these days, and I appreciate that Unity has helped introduce many new people to game development. Healthy competition always provides extra incentives to keep pushing that much harder to make UE4 into an even better product which ultimately benefits developers even more.

Rashid K. Sayed: In the past few months, the few PS4 and Xbox One multiplatform games we’ve seen have a rather interesting range of graphical results. For example, some games feature better depth of field on the PS4 but better anisotropic filtering on the Xbox One. How will Unreal Engine 4 help in providing parity of graphics across both platforms, especially given how similar in architecture they are compared to the past generation?

Ray Davis: Where possible we make sure there’s a great implementation of rendering features across all modern platforms, and then we make sure to expose scalability settings so that developers can tailor their projects to best take advantage of various hardware. In certain cases that means trading off a few post-process effects, or perhaps lowering resolution, but those decisions need to be made based on the type of content required. We focus on making all of those options easily accessible.

"By having source code freely available to UE4 developers it means they’re never stuck waiting on us if they want to build new functionality into the engine or change a system to better suit their needs."

Rashid K. Sayed: With Microsoft renewing its push for games on the PC, how will Unreal Engine 4 help developers get the most out of the upcoming DirectX 12 API? What features and performance increases will it make possible that DirectX 11 couldn’t?

Ray Davis: The most intriguing aspect of DirectX 12 to me is the notion that it’s a concerted effort to remove as much cruft from between the developer and the hardware itself, which means out of the box we’re able to immediately do more for free, essentially. Microsoft has done a great job with the updates, and it’s also worth mentioning that they’ve been a great partner in soliciting feedback from the developers to help guide the future design. Hopefully we’ll see the official launch soon so players can start seeing the benefits firsthand!

Rashid K. Sayed: Microsoft’s Xbox One already has a low level API that resembles DirectX 12. What possible benefits do you think DX12 along with Unreal Engine 4 will bring to games development on Xbox One?

Ray Davis: UE4 already does a great job of showcasing what the Xbox One is capable of and with the advent of DirectX 12 we’re excited to see developers squeezing even more out of the hardware. Several internal Microsoft teams are using UE4 for games development so it’s made it incredibly easy to closely partner with them and to ensure that Unreal Engine is a great development tool for the broader Microsoft ecosystem.

Rashid K. Sayed: With Unreal Engine 4 being free and full access to the source code given, how do you feel this will extend the usability and functionality of the engine in the coming years?

Ray Davis: By having source code freely available to UE4 developers it means they’re never stuck waiting on us if they want to build new functionality into the engine or change a system to better suit their needs. Additionally, by leveraging GitHub we now have a great pipeline to integrate those changes back into UE4 for future release if developers are interested in sharing those changes. When we first discussed the thought of enabling the entire development community to help drive the future development of UE4 it was equal parts exciting and frightening, and after a year of community contributions we’re happy to say the whole process works incredibly well.

Rashid K. Sayed: Though Unreal Engine 4 is making strides to cater to the mobile market, it’s still fairly dominated (though not by a wide margin) by Unity. How will Epic work towards expanding the influence of UE in the mobile space?

Ray Davis: We have two major focuses to ensure UE4 is a great choice for mobile development. The first effort is developing new rendering features and optimizations to further improve UE4’s suitability for the current mobile market. Alongside that we’re also working closely with all the major manufacturers to ensure UE4 is able to take advantage of the latest hardware and API improvements for the next generation of mobile devices. For example, last year we made a push to support the launch of Apple’s new Metal rendering API with Zen Garden which we then quickly made available for UE4 developers to start using for their own projects.

"We’re very close to reaching true interactive photorealism which will create a new level of immersive experiences, and with that we face interesting challenges around how we effectively create all this content."

Rashid K. Sayed: Unreal Engine 3 had a fairly quick adoption rate on the PS3 and Xbox 360. How long do you feel it will take before the PS4 and Xbox One are dominated by UE4 games?

Ray Davis: Quite a few games in development for both PS4 and Xbox One are using UE4 right now and I expect you’ll get to see a good number of those at E3. With this generation we’re seeing many developers already adopting UE4 for their projects, and we’re already seeing an even larger diversity of games powered by Unreal than in the previous generation.

Rashid K. Sayed: More than a year ago, it was announced that Unreal Engine 4 will be dropping its Sparse Voxel Octree Global Illumination solution. Are there plans to revisit this in the future?

Ray Davis: It’s always possible that someday we’ll have plentiful GPUs with enough horsepower where SVOGI becomes a feasible solution, or perhaps there’s another novel approach that will be discovered before then. In the meantime we’ve focused on a combination of lighting solutions that are capable of running on modern hardware, with the most recent dynamic GI work present in our “A Boy and His Kite” open world demo revealed at GDC 2015. Developers have also been experimenting with the VXGI implementation that NVIDIA announced with the launch of Maxwell last year and it’s showing promising results as well.

Rashid K. Sayed: Microsoft recently purchased the Gears of War franchise from Epic Games. How confident do you feel that Microsoft and Black Tusk Studios will remain faithful the core vision of the franchise?

Ray Davis: Having been through shipping hell with Rod Fergusson on past Gears of War games I can say that I’m absolutely confident he’ll do a great job with the franchise at Microsoft. Black Tusk has assembled a solid mix of Gears of War veterans along with talented developers from other great studios so there’s no doubt they’ll breathe new life into the series while still retaining the DNA that made it so fun to play. Now if only they’d start showing off what they’ve been working so hard on…

Rashid K. Sayed: What is the next big challenge the industry needs to face graphics technology wise?

Ray Davis: We’re very close to reaching true interactive photorealism which will create a new level of immersive experiences, and with that we face interesting challenges around how we effectively create all this content. Emerging platforms such as VR also dramatically increase the compute power needed, between the simple fact that you need to render twice for stereo rendering and more importantly the need to run at ultra-high framerates to avoid motion sickness (90-120fps!). And let’s not forget lighting: While we’ve made tremendous advances in lighting quality and dynamic GI solutions, there’s still a long list of challenging problems ahead before we can truly recreate reality.

The open world demo that Epic games showed off at GDC to showcase their Unreal Engine 4 technology has had all of its assets released completely for free (as long as you have an Epic account), meaning they are now fair game for you to mess around with, should you want to.

“For larger assets such as rocks, ground tiles, cliffs faces and tree trunks, reconstruction was performed directly from photographs using a process called photogrammetry,” Epic said. “These assets were then put through a proprietary ‘de-lighting’ process to make them suitable for use in any lighting scenario. Specular and roughness maps where then created to take full advantage of Unreal Engine 4’s Physically Based Rendering architecture. Finally game-optimized assets were generated with normal maps, LODs and collision meshes.”

“For vegetation such as flowers, bushes and grass we used color calibrated reference photography shot in the field to more accurately model and texture these assets.”

Weighing in at 6.3GB, the asset pack should help aspiring game developers get something off the ground. You can download it from here.

With all the games releasing that suffer from online issues, including Halo: The Master Chief Collection which is better following an update but still needs fixing, it’s important to remember Diablo 3. Blizzard Entertainment’s heavily hyped action RPG sequel is infamous for its launch woes where players had to wait in queues for hours to access the single-player since it suppoerted an always-online interface.

But this is Blizzard, which created and maintains World of Warcraft. What went wrong? As it turns out, during a GDC 2015 session, game director Josh Mosqueira talked about how the developer was completely wrong with regards to launch day popularity.

“The sales team had projected 6.666 million units to be sold in the first year; even our sales guys loved Diablo. We got that in the first couple of days – we just didn’t know what to think, it was mind boggling.

“Even our most outlandish estimates for day one, ended up being massively conservative in reality. And it hurt – people had been waiting for ten years to play this game, and the worse fear of an always-online game, is not being able to play. That’s exactly what happened.”

“The sales didn’t matter” for Blizzard in that respect since players couldn’t access the title. Since then though, it’s made amends and turned Diablo 3 into an amazing experience. What are your thoughts on the initial woes? Let us know in the comments.

(Source)

New players may not now this but Bungie’s Destiny originally had a very special trove of treasure called the Loot Cave. Actually, it was an enemy spawn point located on Earth that would endlessly send out foes for players to kill. Guardians could stay perched for hours and just mop up whatever Engrams they wanted. Bungie patched the Loot Cave shortly after, stating that it wasn’t in line with how it wanted players to experience Destiny.

During a GDC 2015 presentation on Destiny, Bungie’s John Hopson revealed the real reason why it was patched: Players wouldn’t stop complaining about so-called trolls blocking the spawn of enemies and effectively nerfing the Loot Cave. “The time of the loot cave was the highest peak of players reporting each other for cheating.” Hopson also reported that players would net lower quality drops from the Cave then they would have playing the game normally.

But really, the only people to blame are those who couldn’t stop complaining about something that wasn’t supposed to exist in the first place. Thoughts on your fellow community members? Let us now in the comments.

(Source)

Nvidia finally took the wraps off of what it’s claiming is “the world’s most advanced GPU” – the Titan X. Appearing at the State of Unreal session hosted by Epic founder Tim Sweeney, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang stated that the GPU features 12 GB of VRAM and 8 billion transistors. To showcase its raw power, a real-time Unreal Engine 4 tech demo running on the Titan X was released. Check it out above.

The Titan X will also reportedly become Nvidia’s costliest GPU till date. Official pricing was missing but previous rumours indicate that it could retail for $1,349. More information on the Titan X will be provided during the GPU Technology Conference taking place form March 17th to 20th and we can’t wait to hear more.

How will current games leverage the Titan X? For that matter, how does it out-match the current king of the GPUs, namely Nvidia’s own Titan Z? Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks to find out.

Xbox division head Phil Spencer revealed during his GDC 2015 session today that Frontier Developments’ Elite: Dangerous is heading to the Xbox One this Summer. The crowd-funded space simulation is available on PC and boasts a persistent, online universe.

Elite: Dangerous sees players work their way up from a single spaceship and some credits to becoming a legendary Elite in the galaxy full of trade and piracy. The narrative sees several factions and superpowers at war and it’ll be up to you how the story evolves. The Xbox One version will include all content released up till the February’s Community Goals update and March’s Wings update, which adds some intricate co-operative elements to the game as you trade and hunt down enemies with your friends.

What are your thoughts on Elite: Dangerous coming to consoles and that too exclusively on the Xbox One? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and stay tuned for more.

FaceWare, which is known for its advanced face rendering technology, has powered some of the most popular games of the modern era. FaceWare’s face rendering technology is not just limited to software solutions, which it licenses out to any interested third and first party developers, but also to specialized hardware that can be used to render some pretty damn realistic looking faces- the kind you will increasingly come to expect (and see) as this generation progresses on.

Now, for GDC 2015, FaceWare have released a brand new trailer that showcases their advanced and sophisticated face rendering technology, that you can see above. It sort of looks like a David Cage promotional video, except FaceWare have the advantage of this trailer being for their technology, not for an upcoming video game or anything.

Anyway, GDC 2015 is ongoing right now, and we at GamingBolt will keep you posted on all of the latest and greatest developments from it. Stay tuned.

Microsoft lived up to their word and to the hype that they had been generating for the January event where they unveiled Windows 10, and a large part of this had to do with just how cool Windows 10 looked for gaming- owing mostly to DirectX 12.

But a lot of Xbox players may have gotten anxious, since Microsoft has not done much to address DirectX 12 on Xbox One, leaving a lot of misinformation and speculation to swirl and circle around on the internet. But now, speaking at The Inner Circle podcast, Microsoft’s marketing director Aaron Greenberg has assured everyone that Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer will be discussing DirectX 12 on Xbox One at the upcoming GDC.

“[It] takes time to get the right tools out. It takes time to allow people to get full power of the box, and you’re right, we’ve made investments in DirectX 12 that will definitely bring some benefits both on the PC and Xbox side in the future that we’re excited about and I’m sure Phil will talk more about what that means for developers at GDC,” Greenberg said.

For those of you who are interested, Spencer’s talk is scheduled for Wednesday, March 4; previously, while Microsoft has promised a lot of end user benefits from DirectX 12 on PC, it has also been pretty evasive about offering any such assurances to Xbox players, instead claiming that the benefits of the API would be mostly on the development side.

Whatever the benefits are, as long as there is some concrete information out there, I’ll be pretty happy. Anything to stop all of this baseless speculation.

Crytek has announced that it will be unveiling a version of its highly poplar and powerful CryEngine for Android and VR devices at GDC this year. Crytek will demo CryEngine powering a brand new VR demo, and it will also be making a case for developing games on Android using its middleware engine.

In addition, if you are more interested in high end console gaming, Crytek will have you covered there too, since it will be showcasing the CryEngine Sandbox- a very powerful and flexible toolset for high end multiplatform game development that, among other platforms, will cover PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Linux.

Personally, this can only be good for us- the engine wars are heating up, what with the aggressive moves that Epic has made with the Unreal 4 engine, and Unity with its newest updates to its engine as well. Aggressive competition between the engine makers means better engines, which means better games. And better games is something I can completely get behind.

The Game Developer’s Conference 2015 is almost here, and I am sure you want to know what the creators of our favorite games will have to say at the biggest forum for them to share their creative process; Sony and Microsoft will be having a massive amount of panels at GDC, discovering all the interesting tech and features on PS4 and Xbox One, and also on the upcoming Windows 10, and even mobile gaming (somewhere, the PS Vita weeps silently).

Sony will be focusing on its talks regarding optimizing the PS4 GPU, connected game experiences (multiplayer gaming, basically), and Unity, which will be where they will be talking most about indie games, I presume.

Microsoft’s panels sound a bit more interesting from a tech enthusiast perspective, honestly- they will be talking about DirectX 12, the cloud, ID@Xbox, cross platform multiplayer, and perhaps most excitingly, Windows 10.

GDC begins on March 2, and will go all the way through to March 6. Stay tuned to GamingBolt for coverage and information.