Mixed reality trailers are a great way to showcase your VR game on a 2D screen, and support for them is on its way to one of the biggest development engines out there.
Taking to Twitter, Epic Games Lead Programmer, James Golding, recently confirmed that the studio is working on mixed reality support for its popular development toolset, Unreal Engine 4. According to Golding this news was first shared at a recent Unreal Summit in Korea, and he even posted a slide from a presentation given as seen below. It specifically states that the developer is adding support for this type of footage, in which you record a player on a green screen set, and then mirror their actions to their in-game activity.
.@omigamedev We’re working on mixed reality support! Here is a slide from our recent Unreal Summit in Korea. #UE4 pic.twitter.com/DbdFSxTvZR
— James Golding (@EpicJamesG) June 7, 2016
Apparently the support will integrate both static and tracked cameras along with several distances to help you frame a shot. A future update will also support capturing video directly into the engine. There’s no date for this right now but, as the replies to Golding’s tweet suggest, developers are elated to hear that support is finally on its way. A Unity plug-in for the feature already exists, and the Unity-developed Fantastic Contraption from Northway Games helped pioneer the concept, so this is a bit of catch up on Epic’s part.
Don’t get this confused with the sort of MR that’s been offered on HoloLens and Magic Leap, though. Epic Games could well be working on support for these kinds of devices too – Unity already supports the former – but it looks like the company is strictly referring to MR for trailers or video capturing right now.
Mixed reality is going to be key to showcasing VR content going forward. We’ve got a pretty handy guide to how to make it possible, including a complete list of components and instructions for setup. You can get everything you’ll need for under $400, which is a small price to pay to be able to properly advertise your VR project to people that might not understand how it will work otherwise. That said there are some tricky parts to it so make sure to follow along pretty carefully.
