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Unreal Engine 4.9 update improves DX12 and VR motion controller support

Epic Games rolled out the latest version of its engine this week, and the full Unreal Engine 4.9 update spans everything from expanded VR headset and mobile platform features to experimental DirectX12 support.

Alex Wawro, Contributor

September 1, 2015

1 Min Read
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Epic Games rolled out the latest version of its engine this week, and the full Unreal Engine 4.9 update spans everything from expanded VR headset and mobile platform features to experimental DirectX12 support.

Unreal developers who use Windows 10 can enable DirectX12 support in Unreal Engine 4 by launching the engine with "-DX12" appended to the command line. In a post on the company blog, Epic's Alexander Paschall noted that "the feature is still new and is considered experimental," but that "we'll continue to improve support for DirectX 12 and look for ways to leverage the new API in upcoming versions of the engine."

The 4.9 update also adds a slew of new VR-related upgrades, including:

  • VR  motion controllers will now all be available through a common interface, potentially making many aspects of UE4 VR game development more convenient. The HTC Vive controller is currently supported, with more to come soon. 

  • Updated to GearVR SDK 0.6.0, fixing several major rendering bugs and hardware compatibility issues

  • Fix for SteamVR latency issues that appeared in 4.8 Preview 2+

  • SteamVR support for the standard Motion Controller abstraction, so both Vive controllers can route to the same player

  • SteamVR C++ projects are now cleanly supported by the SteamVR plugin API

The 4.9 update also includes a significant number of upgrades to the way Unreal Engine 4 supports features of iOS, Android and HTML 5. Mobile UE4 developers may appreciate that Unreal Engine 4.9 now comes with a Flurry analytics plugin for iOS, and improves support for iOS in-app purchase functionality.

For more information and full rundown of changes, check out Epic's official blog post about the 4.9 update.

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