Epic Games has been hard at work creating the next evolution in its always-popular Unreal Engine platform.
Currently, Unreal Engine 3 is powering some of the most graphically superior video games on the market. Even if you’ve never heard of it before, chances are if you’re a gamer you’ve been exposed to it.
In addition to being its own game maker, Epic Games’s main business is in the licensing of this powerful platform to other developers. As a result, it isn’t on the forefront of the average gamer, but trust me – it’s a very important company.
In a highly extensive expose at Wired, Unreal Engine 4 was brought to light, and Epic believes it has the power to transform the gaming environment as we’ve come to know it.
The mastermind behind Epic and the Unreal Engine Tim Sweeney was quoted as saying he wants the next engine “to make a point to the developers” that the next generation of gaming is here.
“For Unreal 4, yet another quantum leap in hardware has to happen. Creating a game that operates on a level of fidelity comparable to human vision, Sweeney says, will require hardware at least 2,000 times as powerful as today’s highest-end graphics processors,” the Wired article reads.
Yes, it’s very tough to wrap your mind around something like that. And just like anything else in this industry, we want to see it to believe it. But if this kind of high-concept talk is true, it might not be like anything we’ve ever seen before.
Another enthusiast / evangelist, Cliff Bleszinski, was quoted as saying some of the most impressive pieces of technology, light its next-generation particle physics and effects, “are going to be whored by developers.”
Unreal Engine 4 isn’t quite ready for prime time yet, but it is certainly on its way there.
