
Video game studio Epic Games, Inc. unveiled a new demo showcasing its latest game engine—the technology that powers the Unreal and Gears of War series—at the 2015 Game Developers Conference (GDC) last month.
Announcing that the Unreal Engine 4 development toolset will now be available to artists for free, Epic demonstrated the technology in an impressive two-minute demo. While Unreal will charge a 5% royalty on games and apps using the engine, it will be royalty-free for filmmakers who wish to use its real-time rendering capabilities for films, TV projects, and other linear-content storytelling purposes.
The demo, A Boy and His Kite, boasts real-time rendering at 30 frames per second in 100 square miles of diverse terrain. The video, which follows a character as he pursues a kite across a lush landscape, also shows off fully dynamic direct and indirect illumination, high quality depth of field and motion blur, and 15 million procedurally placed pieces of vegetation.