I have been using UE4 for the last 3 months, and I start to understand why other engine still charge some money, either as a fixed price or on a monthly basis.
- UE4 is good for the ‘pretties’. It is very quick to create a good looking scene.
- learning curve is relatively low. Blueprints and examples give you a good head start
… so that is the first 1…1 1/2 months.
Then you start going for more serious stuff and notice:
- no built in multithreading support for either physics or rendering (cry engine +)
- very, very limited inverse kinematic and only two bone (cry engine +)
- no soft body physics (cry engine +)
- no built in rope physics (cry engine +)
- PhysX is a engine for ‘pretty’ games that comes with many compromises (unstable collisions detection, no access to joint positions/anle via API, etc…)
etc etc…
The most important lesson after two months of UE4 is, that nVidia PhysX is really only a ‘pretty looks’ physics engineAnd that Havok claims for good reason to be number one.
So as soon as you start developing a full and modern game, where ‘how it moves’ and ‘how it handles’, so ingame physics are important, you realize, that nothing good is for free.
UE4 is still good as a starting point for game development and to shoot a few zombies or whatever, 1990’s first person shooter style, but in my opinion, for modern games, Cryengine, Havok (for physics, or any other paid-for engine is way to go.