I am thinking about which engine to use for my game. As I see it, as i am a solo dev, my game will graphics wise definately not be AAA quality. I am not aiming for photorealism, but more for a stylized approach. But I want my game to be able to run on low end hardware. What is the very minimum hardware an end user must have in order to run a UE4 application? Please, I am not starting an engine war here, but I have the impression Unity3d runs on lower spec hardware. Is true? What are the minimum requirements for UE4? Not to develop, but to run a 3D game. Think something in the graphical quality of “the flame in the flood”.
Used to say a recommended video card of GTX 470 or greater (can’t recall which AMD card it was, but the equivelant performance wise).
You can also adjust the scalability settings to reduce the performance required by the engine for your game, many of the rendering features can be turned off or lowered down.
You meant “**** UE4”. I hate word filter. It’s the worst thing about forum, but for some strange reason I will never understand (old) Americans often don’t like swear words. It’s strange american culture, but on the other side if you open twitch and watch (young) american streamers playing games you get bombs of swear words But in Germany even most old people like to swear.
Just for reference, is the reason for the the word filter:
Back on topic, the game you create can run on lower hardware if you use lower levels. A packaged build will also run much faster than the game in editor, so the end users machine does not need as much power as a dev PC.
Here are a few ways you can affect the performance:
Editor requires 64-bit, but games can be shipped 32-bit
You are able to target DX10 instead of DX11
Engine scalability setting can be turned down to match the target hardware.
It is difficult to say exactly what the specs would be for your game, but if you optimize it right you can use much lower specs than the ones recommended for development above.
For more info on scalability, have a look through these pages in the documentation:
Performance Guidelines - .unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Performance/Guidelines/index.html
Scalability and the Developer - .unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Performance/Scalability/ScalabilityAndYou/index.html
Adjusting Engine Level - .unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Performance/Options/index.html
If there’s something to complain about in regards to UE4 it’s performance and stability. Which is a kudos really as there’s little else to complain about…
Scalability settings from testing give about 5% - 10% framerate back from lowest to epic, in most cases it wasn’t even worth bothering as anything below medium looks decidedly horrible and at that point you’re much better off using Unity. The biggest challenges are / or have been shadow maps / particles and foliage (due to G-buffer size in regards to TDR and translucency) (I’ve still to try 4.7) , for Unreal to step above the competition you need the fancy extra’s like DFAO which obviously comes at a dynamic price.
Not to say Epic aren’t working to assist in such issues, RT Distance shadows where it takes over from CSM really does help in larger games and provides a bigger boost than any scalability.
They still have a long way to go IMO in these regards.
But in Germany even most old people like to swear.