I am starting the development of a game (with vehicles) that should last more than a year.
It would be more productive to start it on version 4.26 or 4.26(Chaos Build)?
Since Chaos must replace PhysX, which one would require less rework when migrating to the next builds of the engine?
In summary my question is: Will the next builds be derived from 4.26 or 4.26 Chaos?
Chaos was originally supposed to replace PhysX in 4.26, but for now it’s still rather buggy and unfinished (and flagged as “Experimental - not for shipping builds”)…
If you start your game now on the 4.26 Chaos Preview build, it’s possible things may change/break between now and a future non-experimental version of the Chaos Vehicle plugin. And from what I’ve read about people’s experience with Chaos Vehicle in 4.26 Preview, it’s barely usable in its current state and probably not something that can be relied upon for game design (YMMV).
I believe Epic’s plans for Chaos are for 1:1 parity with PhysX when it’s ready for prime time, so there should be a painless upgrade path from current PhysX projects to Chaos. IIRC 4.26 was planned be the “final” major version of UE4, so who knows if Chaos will be released in a future hypothetical 4.27, or 4.26.x, or if it will remain experimental on UE4 and only be finalized in UE5.
I’m guessing UE5 developer preview will come out during/after GDC in March, so hopefully they’ll have Chaos a little more finalized by then in both an updated 4.26 as well as 5.0.
TLDR: Maybe safest to start work in PhysX for now and transition when you’re comfortable with the state of Chaos development? Or if you want to dive into Chaos this early, be prepared to dig into the engine source to track down and fix bugs… @mniemann seems to have gotten it working nicely for a professional project after some source tweaks:
Good luck!
PhysX Vehicles are Marked as deprecated (for example, WheeledVehicle), and Epic recommend to use Chaos Vehicles. But it is experimental…
Thanks for your advice. I am facing the same decision. I would like to upgrade UE4 version to 4.26. Is your mentioned recommendation not to use Chaos just because vehicles are still very experimental, or would you also recommend if it’s for a multiplayer shooter game with physics simulations (physics enabled static meshes + some ragdoll, no vehicles) to continue now already with Chaos in 4.26, or also better wait until Chaos is no longer experimental.
It seems Epic likes the experimental flag and features often stay in experimental for extremely long time. Even if things were already in UE4 Inside talks and shown how to use them.
Even the localization dashboard is still labeled experimental in the editor and is the only translation solution. I also use it for production already.
Is 4.26 Chaos Preview 3 ready to be used for production games when replicated the physical simulations are used in the game?