This is awesome news 
Source: Announcing Oculus Connect, RakNet Open Source, and E3 2014 Awards | Oculus
GitHub: GitHub - facebookarchive/RakNet: RakNet is a cross platform, open source, C++ networking engine fo
Note: it’s rather late here, so I will expand on this thread post tomorrow if it builds any traction.
As somebody planning to use UE4 for VR game development, I have questions in response to this news. But first, the definition of RakNet given by Oculus:
This sounds like something that would very nicely fit into UE4, being C++ and cross-platform (am I wrong?). Is this kind of technology something Epic would officially integrate? Or can we expect this to be only integrated via a plugin? Is there even a need for this software? That is, does UE4 already do all of this (and more?)? From what little UE4 networking I have dabbled with, obviously it can handle replication and RPCs. But I don’t know of it inherently can do “patching, secure connections, voice chat, and real-time SQL logging.” Voice chat and SQL sound especially nice, but maybe beyond the scope of what Epic wants to support? Again, maybe a community handled plugin only?
Basically, it sounds very exciting that this RakNet softeare is now available to all for free and open source. But do UE4 developers benefit?
Thanks to all those with answers and thoughts.
Doubtful. They spend enough resources maintaining their built-in networking. We may see a plugin, but keep in mind RakNet was just bought by Oculus so they probably don’t have much incentive to create a UE4 plugin. If we see anything my guess is it will come from the community.
I’m curious about this as well! As you mentioned, built-in Unreal networking already does a lot of this. RakNet does seem to offer so much more functionality though (voice, lobbies, patching, NAT punchthrough)
I’d love to hear from someone who has used RakNet and can comment on how it performs vs. built-in Unreal state management/RPC.
Well - They have Unreal specific Source from the looks of it.
Might be a plugin but not sure as I do not have an active subscription atm.
It’s interesting, although I have couple of questions about it.
What would be advantages in terms of perfomance/ease of development over using build in Unreal Networking ?
Does RakNet support automatic load balancing/synchronization between server instances ?
I need to apologize for opening a thread similar to this one…I must have missed this thread…sorry…
Hey no problem we all make mistakes 