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Watch a Designer Work with the Unreal Engine from Within Virtual Reality

Epic Games’ latest project makes game design look easy.
Rachel Pick
New York, US

Soon, developers will be able to build games from within a virtual reality environment.

Epic Games, maker of the Unreal Engine game creation software, recently announced a tool that allows developers to virtually occupy the world of their games while they construct them—and this video shows exactly how impressive the project looks.

Using a VR headset and two handheld motion controllers, Epic Games' Mike Fricker moves, transforms and copies objects in the landscape of a game. The motion controllers show up as laser pointers within the VR system, so you can select and modify objects easily. Fricker also opens and uses the Unreal software's content browser within the VR world, adding objects to the virtual environment with the equivalent of a click and drag. Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, also shown in the video, compares it to using an iPad.

This breakthrough software, which can be used to build both VR and non-VR games, will hopefully make it easier for more people to access the field of game design. "Especially non-programmers and creative folk," Sweeney has said. "It's much easier to edit in VR when you can just reach out and move the object."

Epic Games plans to release more info about this latest project at the Games Developer Conference in March.