A comprehensive review of mainstream VR engines at home and abroad: Which VR engine is the best?

Since Facebook acquired Oculus for $2 billion in 2014, a large number of domestic manufacturers have begun to invest in the virtual reality industry, but most of them focus on hardware such as helmets and glasses, and there is a serious lack of content. The core of the development of virtual reality content is based on VR engines. It can be said that no matter which company's VR helmets consumers are willing to buy, the final winners may be these VR engine companies. After all, millions of developers need VR engines to develop video games. With the rise of virtual reality, it will become the "darling" of the new era.

In the face of the VR wave, major game engines such as Unreal, Unity, CryENGINE, and Cocos 3D have followed suit, all determined to seize this unique opportunity and establish their own status in the industry. A new round of VR engine wars is about to break out.

To this end, we visited game engine companies at home and abroad and analyzed and compared their products, hoping to give readers a better understanding of this technology and products.

1. A thorough review of mainstream game engines at home and abroad

The mainstream engines in the current domestic market include UE4 engine, CryEngine3, Unity 3D, Cocos 3D, etc. In addition, Beijing Infinite Space-Time Network Technology Co., Ltd. launched the country's first next-generation virtual reality engine - Infinite VR Engine, providing developers with new options besides the above engines.

Unreal Engine 4

Unreal (short for UNREAL ENGINE) is the world's most famous and widely licensed top game engine, accounting for 80% of the global commercial game engine market share. UE4 has powerful rendering effects and uses a pbr physical material system, so its real-time rendering effect is good, which can achieve a similar effect to vray still frames, making it one of the most popular engines for developers.

In Unreal Engine 4.7, the "VR Preview" feature was added. In short, this new option allows VR developers to immediately browse their work through Oculus Rift, so as to better develop. In June 2015, Unreal Engine 4.8 was released, supporting VR for multiple platforms.

In order to further attract developers to join the UE camp, the UE4 engine was announced to be free to download, and this strategy has also achieved remarkable results - as of July 2016, the engine has more than 2 million developers, nearly double the previous number. In recent years, the UE4 engine has become the magic weapon for many VR game experiences.

Unity 3D

Unity3D is a comprehensive game development tool developed by Unity Technologies that allows players to easily create interactive content such as 3D video games, architectural visualization, real-time 3D animation, etc. It is a fully integrated professional game engine. Unity uses an interactive graphical development environment as the primary method. Its editor runs on Windows and Mac OS X, and can publish games to Windows, Mac, Wii, iPhone, WebGL (requires HTML5), Windows phone 8 and Android platforms.

Now, Unity's focus is on adjusting the game engine to meet the needs of virtual reality developers. Unity 5.1 adds a "highly optimized" rendering pipeline for VR and augmented reality devices. It also adds native support for Oculus Rift HMD, allowing developers to plug in their development tools and use them immediately. The most anticipated virtual reality helmet Oculus Rift has begun shipping, and 16 of the 30 games available for this device are developed using Unity technology. In addition, Unity's technology is also very popular among developers who develop games for HTC and Sony virtual reality helmets and Microsoft augmented reality helmet HoloLens.

Unity's game engine has an advantage in low-cost devices that can be tethered to smartphones to allow people to experience low-end virtual reality technology. Currently, more than 90% of the games on Gear VR, a virtual reality device jointly developed by Samsung and Oculus based on smartphones, are developed based on Unity technology.

CryENGINE

CryENGINE is a game engine produced by German company CRYTEK that supports the latest DirectX 11 technology. Cryengine is a next-generation game engine compatible with PS3, 360, MMO, DX9 and DX10. Unlike other competitors, CryENGINE does not require third-party software support to handle physical effects, sounds and animations. In short, it is a very versatile engine.

At the 2016 GDC Game Developers Conference, Crytek, the developer of Crysis, officially unveiled its latest game engine, CryEngine 5, which fully supports DX12 and VR development and is open source and free! Crytek's most famous CE engine has created the Crysis series and Son of Rome. The visual performance brought by this engine has conquered players all over the world.

CryENGINE has not developed smoothly in recent years. In 2014, Crytek, the developer of the famous game engine CryENGINE, was on the verge of bankruptcy and could not even pay salaries. It was not until Amazon injected a huge amount of funds that the studio had a chance to breathe. Part of the reason for CryENGINE's failure was that it was out of touch with the market. When CryENGINE entered Steam to promote subscription payment for independent developers, u3d and ue had already established a complete community. The official documents were incomplete and there were few successful examples, which restricted its development. However, the advent of the VR era has also brought new opportunities to CryENGINE.

Cocos 3D

Cocos 3D engine is a VR game engine developed by Touch Technology. Its representative works include Fishing Master, My Name is MT, 2048, etc. Most of its users are East Asian game developers, but most of them are small games.

Currently, the Cocos engine has a very large market share in China. It can not only help developers develop games conveniently, but also realize the docking and input of VR hardware. The Cocos engine has a special integrated VR mode to facilitate developers to develop VR. However, the Cocos engine was originally just a 2D game engine, and the engine optimization for 3D and VR is not achieved overnight. Therefore, compared with international mainstream engines such as Unreal, Cocos 3D has a considerable gap and needs more improvements in the future.

Infinity VR Engine

Infinity VR Engine is the first next-generation virtual reality engine in China launched by Beijing Infinity Spacetime Network Technology Co., Ltd. It can significantly improve operating efficiency while ensuring next-generation graphics effects. Its low learning threshold will also help VR practitioners to produce high-quality VR works more quickly and actively promote the development of China's virtual reality industry.

The Infinite VR Engine took five years to develop. It is understood that the Infinite VR Engine has done a lot of in-depth customization and development for the characteristics of VR, including multiple optimizations for VR's binocular rendering characteristics, support for mainstream head-mounted display devices, mainstream handle input and gesture recognition systems, as well as somatosensory simulation firearms and character positioning modules, support for virtual reality 3D interfaces, etc. While ensuring the same image quality, the operation efficiency is higher. At the same time, the Infinite VR Engine has also customized and optimized mobile platforms and VR, and developed a complete set of software layer interface agents. Developers do not need to consider the SDK access issues of various helmets. They only need to update the proxy layer plug-in at any time to support various hardware helmets.

2. VR engine competition, each has its own characteristics and shortcomings

With the advent of the civilianization of virtual reality, major engine manufacturers have begun to lay out their own positioning, including engine business adjustments, commercial activities, product pricing strategies, and support for VR. However, for developers, the selection of game engines is a big problem, and they need to consider engine performance, multi-platform support, development difficulty, commercial copyright, technical support and other factors. Therefore, we make a simple comparison of the above five engines in various aspects.

In terms of engine rendering performance, UE4 engine and CryEngine3 have the best rendering effect with their top-level graphics processing capabilities, followed by Untiy and Infinite VR Engine. Cocos 3D engine was originally just a 2D game engine, so its 3D and VR rendering are naturally not as good as the above. VR is a technology that focuses on experience, so the current VR, from concept to project establishment, is completely based on a strong sense of visual impact as the main indicator. Under this trend, high-rendering effect engines such as UE4 are of course more popular with VR developers. From April to July 2016, the number of registered developers on the UE4 platform increased by 500,000, reaching a total of 2 million.

In terms of multi-platform compatibility, Unity3D engine has the best cross-platform support, publishing games to Windows, Mac, Wii, iPhone, WebGL (HTML5 required), Windows phone 8 and Android platforms. UE4, CryEngine3 and Infinity VR engine focus on PC game development, while cocos 3D is more used in mobile game development.

In terms of development difficulty, cocos 3D, Infinite VR and Unity3D engines are easy to develop and the interface is easy to use. Cocos 3D and Unity3D are very complete in terms of resources and plug-ins in the relevant development chain. In terms of development efficiency, they are definitely better. The Infinite VR engine was launched not long ago, and the expansion resources are not rich enough, which will cause some inconvenience to developers. UE4 and CryEngine3 have complex workflows, high learning difficulty, and high hardware requirements. Developers need to have a considerable understanding to fully exert their performance, and the development difficulty is relatively high.

In terms of business cooperation, Unity has several different licensing fees. Its Pro version is $1,500 or $75/month at the time of this article. The pro version provides many features that are not included in the free version, and UE4, CryEngine 5, and cocos engines are all open source and free. However, if you want to get better technical support, you still need to pay for service support.

In summary, the above five engines have their own advantages and disadvantages. However, relatively speaking, Unity3D and cocos3D engines are more suitable for mobile VR games, while UE 4 and CryENGINE have fascinating graphics capabilities and are more suitable for developing PC-side game masterpieces. The Infinity VR Engine may also become a good choice for developers with its advantages such as next-generation image quality, high operating efficiency, easy to use, and compatibility with various VR hardware.