The seventeenth update to the Unreal Engine game engine was released the other day. The main innovations and fixes of the new version relate to the capabilities of the engine with which developers create cut scenes.
A lot of edits were made to Sequencer, which simplified some of the functionality and introduced a new one. In particular, due to the fact that sections in Sequencer have become possible to merge with each other, now transitions without seams are not a problem. In addition to this, the Composition Compositing Plugin has appeared, which allows complex compositing in real time.
In 4.17, basic support for the Xbox One X, which has not yet gone on sale, appeared. Development for a new platform will not require the creation of a separate build. What is created for Xbox One will work on Xbox One X.
Mobile developers will be glad to know that the Unreal Engine has – albeit only experimental – support for ARKit for iOS. Recall that this plugin is from the Wingnut team, which allows developers to create AR scenes and objects that interact with the real environment.
Animations in Blueprints are now edited and recompiled in real time and immediately in the editor. That is, they corrected something in the chain of events, set up a new connection and immediately saw how the object or character began to move after that. But this is also an experimental feature for now.
Andrey Dyakov from Sperasoft noted in an interview with App2Top.ru that for those who work on VR projects, an important innovation in Unreal Engine 4.17 is the VR Spectator Screen, which was previously available only on PSVR, and now there is also on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
This feature allows you to control the image displayed on the PC or console display from the virtual space. Moreover, now you can display not only what the player sees directly in the helmet, but also any image from any position in the scene. Since such an output mode can significantly affect the performance of the game, it should be used with caution. Nevertheless, with the help of VR Spectator Screen, you can complement the gameplay of VR games, allowing observers to evaluate game progress from a different angle, display additional information available only to them, and even allow them to influence the gameplay of a player in a helmet. I also want to note that now VR developers for HTC Vive will no longer have to modify the source code of the engine in order to display an image from one of the eyes to the entire screen on the monitor: previously, it displayed one square by default. It was possible to include two as well. But it was impossible to see the full screen
Associate Technical Director at Sperasoft
The full list of Unreal Engine 4.17 innovations can be found at this link.