VR Development Software

@Austin

Overview

The successor to Unreal Engine 4, Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) is Epic Games' latest update to the game development suite which so many use to develop their games for a multitude of platforms. It now carries better support for the latest consoles, but more importantly for this wiki, contains updated support for VR/AR/MR uses.  UE5 brings improved 3D texture visuals, landscaping, and lighting while not sacrificing performance. It's able to provide real time lighting and texture effects, which can be helpful for developers, being able to see changes without needing to recompile or rebuild.

See the wiki page for more info and setup instructions!

@Charles, Updated by @Hiloni

What is Unreal Engine 4?

Unreal Engine 4 is a complete suite of development tools made for anyone working with real-time technology. From enterprise applications and cinematic experiences to high-quality games across PC, console, mobile, VR and AR, Unreal Engine 4 gives you everything you need to start, ship, grow and stand out from the crowd.

What are features and supports?

Unreal Engine 4 is a popular game engine for both 2D and 3D games, including VR games. It supports Oculus Rift, Steam VR / HTC Vive, PlayStation VR, Mac, iOS / ARKit, Google ARCore, Samsung Gear VR, Google VR, OSVR, and Leap Motion.

Unreal Engine 4 Games 

Official Website

More Information

Recommended Development Hardware

Price: FREE!


Installation: (Warning: You have to create an external account)

Install time: 20-30 minutes 

Unity 3D

What is Unity?

Unity 3D is a popular game engine for both 2D and 3D games, including VR games. It supports Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, HTC Vive, (unknown pls someone figure out what that is in the picture), Gear VR, Microsoft Hololens, and Google Daydream. There are third party plugins available as well for additional VR platforms.

Cost

Space

Supported OS's - for running Unity games

Supported OS's - for development

Supported VR Hardware

Time to Install

Resources

Unity 3D Games 

Notes on Unity - (A note for Unity 3D + SteamVR  (HTC vive)

-- Fumeng (01/30/18)

Official Website

More Information

Cryengine

Cryengine is a popular game engine for 3D games, including VR games. Cryengine is know to support Playstation VR, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

Currently several games including "The Climb," and "Robinson: The Journey" have been built in Cryengine with VR support.

Cryengine is free to use and has a "pay what you want" model.

Official Website

More Information

Lumberyard

Lumberyard is a new game engine for 3D games, including VR games. There is not much information on the official website as to the VR platforms it supports (someone figure this out pls).

Currently no known games made with Lumberyard.


Lumberyard is free to use.


Official Website

More Information

Vizard

Cost

Space

Supported OS's  (+ desired requirements)

Supported VR Hardware

Time to Install

Resources

Tutorial

linktototorialpage

The Visualization Toolkit (VTK) is an open-source library for 3D computer graphics and scientific visualization. It consists of a C++ class library and several interpreted interface layers including Tcl, Java, and Python.

Official Website

More Information

A-Frame/WebVR

"WebVR is a JavaScript API for creating immersive 3D, virtual reality experiences in your browser. A-Frame uses the WebVR API to gain access to VR headset sensor data (position, orientation) to transform the camera and to render content directly to VR headsets. Note that WebVR, which provides data, should not be confused nor conflated with WebGL, which provides graphics and rendering." A-frame is based in HTML and  built on top of the DOM so most libraries and frameworks work including:


Cost

Space

Supported Headsets 

Time to Install

Tutorials (will simplify/expand upon later)

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Games/Techniques/3D_on_the_web/Building_up_a_basic_demo_with_A-Frame

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv6_C4UqTfs


Sources

https://makezine.com/2016/03/24/makers-introduction-vr-best-software-tools-free/ (Viewed January 29th, proper citation TODO)

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/vr (Viewed January 29th, proper citation TODO)

https://unity3d.com/solutions/cinematicvr (Viewed January 29th, proper citation TODO)

https://aframe.io/docs/0.7.0/introduction/vr-headsets-and-webvr-browsers.html (Viewed February 15, proper citation TODO)