What is the Unreal Engine, and what makes it so different from the Quake engine, or any other game engine for that matter?
(optional to read) Reason for asking this question: DC Comics is going to create a massive multiplayer online game (MMO) using the Unreal Engine.
It’s a game engine and editor. It’s a set of integrated systems (rendering, physics, audio, input handling etc) with a large set of accompanying tools.
As for the Quake engine, that would be iD Tech and a rival product - which is kind of like asking what the different between a Fiat and a Renault is. Fundamentally they do more or less the same thing.
As said here regarding the comparison between the two engines, it’s mainly just personal preference on what to use. Recently, the demand for Unreal Engine, in my sector, has been dramatic so naturally, we’re adopting it and using it to keep up with the trends of services to offer clients.
If you want to find out anything more about Unreal as a whole, you can use this link to the official site and read more into it: Features - Unreal Engine
Honestly, I don’t think Unreal is a “game engine” anymore…
They pretty much are going beyond that, wherever real-time rendering is needed, Unreal is involved.
I mean games, VR, live mocap, movies, animations, tv commercials, architecture, engineering (cars), etc; a lot of services for some reason are giving Unreal a try since they went “free”.
Yeah, thats because the “game” definition has always been blurry, and while you can create movies, or even paste and create a photo reel, it doens’t subtract from the goal the engine was made for, which i also believe (specially with unreal studio) that is no longer “Games” but more like “Interactive/Realtime experiences”
Couldn’t agree more here. Since the start of the Unreal Studio it’s taken off really. So many companies who we’ve worked with or see on social media now have it somewhere in their pipelines. Definitely hit the nail on the head.
It is still a games engine and it always will be. It can do a lot of things that 3ds max can do but it can also do many many more things. Using it for ArchViz and Design means you are most likely only using a small part of it.
It has been around since before the year 2000. If you would open the first version you would discover that many things still work the same way as then. It is just a lot better now.
Quake engine is probably a couple of years older than unreal. But it was never really used by that many companies. The strongest advantage of unreal engine has always been the tools. They just work better than in many other engines. Unreal seems to try to be user friendly for artists and designers. While many other engines are sometimes made by and for programmers and are less intuitive.