Epic are working on a Oculus-ready version of their Unreal Development Kit that will be ready for developers to play with as soon as their headset arrives this coming April.
As well as releasing a version of their free game engine, the UDK, able to integrate with the VR headset, they’re working on integrating the Oculus into the full-version of their technology, the Unreal Engine 3, that powers games like Bioshock, Borderlands, and Mass Effect.
Writing in an update to the Oculus Rift’s Kickstarter page, Palmer Luckey, head of Oculus VR, said that they’ve “been working with Epic since the launch of the Kickstarter campaign to make the Oculus integration for Unreal Engine as high-performance as possible. With the Oculus-ready version of the UDK, you’ll be able to start building incredible VR experiences with the Unreal Engine toolset the moment you receive your Rift development kit.”
Some of the Rift-specific optimisations that will be included in the April release of the UDK will be:
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Added roll and z-depth to shaders
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Optimized low latency VR rendering – sensor update on the render thread, disabling GPU buffering and adding full scene super sampling (1.5-2x)
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Made UI and videoes work with head tracking and z-depth
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Players can now head-look during Matinee sequences
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Added console commands and config settings for all parameters
As well as these optimisations the UDK comes with some sample levels for you to test out the technology. This includes the Epic Citadel tech demo: