Unreal Engine 4.9 enhances mobile support, adds VR motion controllers

Epic Games has launched the latest point release of its flagship Unreal Engine 4, which concentrates on supporting mobile and virtual reality developers.

Unreal Engine 4.9 improves support for leading mobile platforms, with perhaps the most notable being dynamic character shadows and dynamic point light for all mobile games. The mobile renderer also now supports decals with a variety of blend modes.

iOS devs can now utilise Remote Push Notifications and CloudKit, as well as improved In-App Purchase functionality. Meanwhile on Android, Epic has added OpenGL ES 3.1, asynchronous audio decompression, better orientation features and more.

The company also reports major updates to its VR support, with fixes made for devs building games for both SteamVR – the platform that powers HTC’s ViveVR headset – and Samsung’s Gear VR.

Motion controllers built for virtual reality are now supported through UE4’s common abstraction layer. This feature initially focuses on HTC’s Vive controller, but more devices – including PlayStation Move – are expected to be supported soon.

DirectX 12 support is also added, but only as an experimental feature at this point. You can find out more information on the 129 improvements made in the release notes.