CARY – Epic Games is making headlines at the annual Game Developers Conference in Los Angeles, showcasing upgraded technology for creating more lifelike computer generated images, announcing $100 million in grants, and touting the fact that more games are coming to its store as the Cary company steps up its battle with other services.
Tim Sweeney
“Our success is inextricably linked to developer success, and that ethos guides everything we do,” said Epic founder and CEO Sweeney. “From our free Online Services and Epic MegaGrants to new Unreal Engine features, our goal is to help developers, and to equip them to give players even better experiences.”
Launched in December, the Epic store has some 85,000,000 PC players and 55,000 creators.
Epic also demonstrated updates to its Unreal development engine that demonstrate the shrinking differences between film/video and computer-created images.
The trailers follow:
“Troll” is “a real-time short from Goodbye Kansas and Deep Forest Films, features a scene starring a digital princess, fairies and an enchanted crown to demonstrate how ray tracing can create cinematic-quality lighting with complex soft shadows and reflections. Troll was created entirely with Unreal Engine 4.22, leveraging the powerful new ray tracing features that will forever change how digital content is created.”
The second, Quixel’s Rebirth, is a “short was created by a team of just three artists and highlights use of the studio’s state-of-the-art photogrammetry techniques, extensive asset library, and world-class artistry to demonstrate new levels of photorealistic beauty in Unreal Engine. The movie is lit, composed, edited, and rendered entirely in Unreal Engine 4.21, with no custom plugins or code.”
Last August, Epic demonstrated similar capabilities.
On the gaming front, Epic noted that Ubisoft, which owns Triangle-based Red Storm Entertainment (originally owned by Tom Clancy) will be bringing several games to the Epic store, which offers a greater revenue share to developers than its competitors.
Ubisoft chose to launch Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 recently on the Epic store.
Other games coming to the store include:
- Take-Two Interactive’s Private Division’s The Outer Worlds from Obsidian Entertainment and Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey from Panache Digital Game
- Quantic Dream’s protfolio of Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human “to PC for the first time, exclusively to the store”
- Afterparty from Night School Studios
- Control from Remedy Entertainment and 505 Games
- The Cycle from YAGER
- Dauntless from Phoenix Labs
- Industries of Titan from Brace Yourself Games
- Journey to the Savage Planet from Typhoon Studios and 505 Games
- Kine from Chump Squad
- Phoenix Point from Snapshot Games
- The Sinking City from Frogwares and Bigben
- Spellbreak from Proletariat Inc.
- Solar Ash from Heart Machine and Annapurna Interactive
More Epic headlines from WRAL TechWire:
Is it film or computer graphics? Epic Games nears ‘photorealism’ – see the video
Epic Games promises $100M in grants for game developers, content creators, students
Epic Games lands whopping $1.25B in new financing from high-profile investors
