Virtual reality boldly goes where it hasn’t gone before in developer Thomas Kadlec’s Starship Bridge Demo, which allows players to explore Star Trek Voyager‘s titular ship in a demo powered by Unreal Engine 4 (via Road To VR). It’s the first VR demo to use Epic Games’ newly released development tools, which feature built-in support for Oculus Rift VR’s headset.
Rift dev kit owners can download it right here (alternate link). This should go without saying for anyone that owns one of the headsets, but the demo’s visual fidelity will be restricted by the technical limitations of the first-generation Rift’s low-resolution twin displays.
What’s more, like most tech demos, this is an interactive toy to ‘ooo’ and ‘aah’ over, but there’s not a whole lot to it. Star Trek fans will get a kick out of stepping into the Voyager’s bridge, but the real point here is to showcase what UE4 could mean for VR development.
Unreal 4 was released on April 2, which means Kadlec was able to build this demo in less than one month. He praises the flexibility of the development tools in allowing him to implement ideas quickly and easily, in a statement given to Road To VR.
It’s clear that Epic’s recent shift to a subscription pricing model for Unreal is going to encourage more and more so-called bedroom developers to step up, and out-of-the-box support in UE4 for the Rift suggests we’ll be seeing plenty more like Starship Bridge Demo soon.
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