Unreal Engine 4 is now free

[MartGonzo]

Hi all, A few days ago Unreal Engine 4 went free for non-commercial use.

just sign up and you can download the latest UE4 (4.7) and get access to the editor all the sample content and Unreal tournament 4 pre-alpha

https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal-engine-4

It would be very nice if squad were to make the switch, but who knows how much work that would be?

and UE4 comes with the agreement that commercial use means you have to pay Epic, I think it's around 5 percent but I didn't check those details.

The editor itself is amazing, built for ease of use, it sets the benchmark for a well designed user interface that's easy to pick up while still being comprehensive. the features list in UE4 is incredible but suffice to say it's the first truly next gen engine and therefore has the capacity to really make your computer wheeze.

I wouldn't recommend downloading the elemental demo and trying to run it on your own machine unless it's on a beefy computer, the scene is around 10.5Gb

[EzinX]

UE4 lacks support for multi-camera rendering, the trick that KSP uses to render far away bodies.

UE4 is open source, however, and Unity isn't. This means it would be practical to add a second rendering mode or some other feature to allow for far rendering.

I think KSP could be ported, but I suspect the project could take a year or so before KSP was capable of the same level of features it is right now. And, for what benefit? UE4 does have what have to be some of the world's best graphics, but you need a huge team of artists and modelers to create the content to actually display with these high end graphics techniques. Squad doesn't have such a team. They have, what, 1-2 artists and modelers, total?

The reason KSP looks like it does - pretty ok but not ultra amazing, is because of this limited budget and time for fancy art, fancy lightning, fancy models, etc. Unity, especially version 5, has more or less the same rendering features as UE4. (UE4 may be tuned a little better or something, but essentially you can do the same stuff in either engine)