A Preview of the upcoming 4.9 release is now available via the Epic Games Launcher and GitHub. We have made this Preview available so that our developer-community can help us catch issues before the final release. As fixes are implemented, we will release updated previews throughout the development cycle. Please be aware that the preview releases are not fully quality tested, that they are still under heavy active development, and that they should be considered as unstable until the final release. Developers should not convert their projects for active development on preview releases. Please test on copies of your project instead.
We encourage users to check out the preview to try new features and inform us of any issues which we may not have caught. A Known Issues List is provided below which will be updated periodically. If you discover any additional issues with this preview release, please report the issue on the Bug Reports section of the Unreal Engine AnswerHub.
4.9 Preview Summary
This list provides a brief summary of updates in this release. Full release notes will be made available with the final 4.9 release. We may not be able to provide additional information about updates at this time.
- Editor Updates:
- You're now able to use advanced search syntax when performing searches in the Content Browser
- Improvements to the usability and robustness of Collections, including nested collections, dynamic collections, and more
- Blueprint Updates:
- Optimized Math Expression node is now more performant than regular nodes
- Functions can now have Multiple Return Nodes
- Construct Object From Class node lets you spawn baser object types
- Get Class Defaults node gives access to Blueprints' values without having to create an instance
- Level Blueprints can now be communicated with via interfaces using the Get Streaming Level node
- Asset ID and Class Asset ID are two new data types exposed to Blueprints
- Core Updates:
- Runtime Asset Cache is a generic asset cache system that can be used to persistently store data generated during runtime in configurable asset buckets
- Framework Updates:
- Sound Quality Levels give sound designers the ability to manage audio memory usage and some performance
- Asynchronous Real-time Audio Decompression available on supported platforms
- You can now define your own custom curve for attenuating sounds rather than simply being limited to the built in algorithms
- You can now specify an interval at which a tick function will be executed
- Improvements to Actor encroachment detection
- The Montage Element Timing Interface helps you control the order that Montage events fire
- We now support many different blending functions between animation poses and transitions
- Hierarchical LOD improvements including preview builds and the HLODVolume
- We support Metadata that can be added to animation assets now, derived from UAnimMetaData
- Bone driven controllers allow you to adjust one or more components of a Driven bone based on the motion of a component of the Driver bone
- Mobile Rendering Updates:
- Dynamic Point Lights are now supported
- Dynamic Character Shadows can be used with otherwise static lighting and shadowing
- Decals are now supported
- Platform Updates:
- TADP replaced with NVIDIA AndroidWorks for Windows and Mac OSX
- HTML5 SDK 1.30.0 is now included with the Engine distribution
- Rendering Updates:
- Improvements to Blendables, including Blueprint interaction via the Add or Update Blendable node
- The Collision module on GPU particle emitters has a new property called 'Collision Mode' where you can specify 'Distance Field'
- Distance Field Ambient Occlusion quality and performance improvements
- There are two new nodes to access the global distance field properties within the material editor
- Area shadows for stationary lights
- The new Ambient Occlusion Material Mask feature lets you access Lightmass calculated AO in your material
- VR Updates:
- Motion Controller devices like the Vive SteamVR Controller, the Sony Move, and others will now all be available through a common interface
- Major SteamVR Updates
- Additional details and bug fixes will be communicated in the full Release Notes for 4.9!
Quick Notes:
- UE 4.9 Preview does not yet support Visual Studio 2015. It is expected to be experimental via GitHub for the final 4.9.0 release. For additional information, please view this thread.
- UE 4.9 is expected to run on Windows 10, but has not been thoroughly tested.
- DX12 is still very experimental with 4.9, but it can be enabled by running the editor with the -D3D12 parameter on Win 10.
- UE 4.9 does not support the OS X 10.11 El Capitan beta
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