Epic Games has just revealed a preview of what the future of virtual reality game development could look like.
The new feature is called VR Editor and was announced during a live-streamed press conference from the Epic Games headquarters in North Carolina. The feature is a virtual reality edition of its Unreal Engine game-development tool, enabling developers to create VR within VR.
Just drag and drop in virtual reality
Not only can a tool like VR Editor make creating within virtual reality easier, but the shift in creative process from developing on a 2D screen, then slapping on a headset to preview, versus natively creating within a VR environment will dramatically improve content creation creativity.
Eliminating the time wasted to go back and forth from editing and visualizing your work in virtual reality is what many VR developers have been hoping for.
In the video above, Epic Games’ Time Sweeney and Mike Fricker give a first glimpse of VR content creation using the VR Editor. The video shows them using a HTC Vive, but developers will also be able to create content in VR using the Oculus Rift with motion controllers.
“This is a huge simplification of the process,” Sweeney said. “You can directly manipulate things, like a Minority Report approach. This is the way everything will go, and it will go very quickly, given how fun it can be compared to a computer and a mouse.”
Epic plans to show off the technology at the upcoming Game Developers Conference in March in San Francisco.
