GDC 2015: An Epic Discussion on Unreal Engine and VR Technology [VIDEO]

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

An Epic perspective on VR

Epic Games earlier this week announced that it was dropping its subscription fee to license Unreal Engine 4. Now instead of paying $19 per month on top of any applicable royalties, developers can dive in and get access to UE4's complete C++ source code hosted on GitHub. They can even make a little bit of pocket change without sharing the wealth -- up to $3,000. After that, a 5 percent royalty per quarter applies. Not a bad deal, and we caught up with Epic at GDC to talk about this and more.
General Manager Ray Davis was manning Epic's booth. He explained that the subscription removal and 5 percent royalty above $3,000 is designed to remove any barriers that developers might have from using UE4. Not all projects are going to be hits, and so Epic set up a model where it succeeds when and only if developers succeed.
"These days there's a wide diversity of developers and the types of products we're going for and so we want to make sure that there's no friction for people to get started, to pick up the tools and start actually building whatever their idea may be," Davis explained.
Davis also touched on UE4 supporting multiple VR technologies, including the new Steam VR hardware, Oculus Rift, and others. With so many hardware options, we asked if he was concerned about a standards war. For right now the answer is no, as Davis noted that until there's a clear de facto standard, they're all helping to push VR forward.
Here's more:

We also have some footage of Epic's Crescent Bay Unreal Engine demo. Here it is:



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