GDC 2013: Oculus Rift dev kits to ship with VR-enabled version of Unreal Development Kit

Epic are throwing their weight behind the Oculus Rift with a VR-tuned custom version of their Unreal Development Kit, Develop report. It'll be distributed with Rift headsets and offered free to Unreal Engine 3 licensees next month. A VR-enabled version of the Unreal Engine 3 Citadel tech demo will be included, so users can push their faces into that finely tessellated stonework with REAL TIME PHYSICAL NECK BENDING.

Is the Oculus any good? The word on the hypewire is "VROMG." Owen went face-on with the device last year and said it was "amazeballs." The headsets were originally destined to ship with a VR-enabled version of Doom BFG, but that biz fell through . Luckily Valve have been working on a VR version of their superior game, Team Fortress 2, and modders are are already tinkering with VR Half-Life 2 and VR Crysis .

The Epic VR UDK only means more support for the goggles. What do you have to say for yourself, CEO and founder of Epic Games Tim Sweeney? “We view virtual reality as a massive technological step forward, and are arming all developers with the tools to create game experiences that represent the future. Our partnership with Oculus will bring the highest quality experiences to virtual reality games.”

Dan's is one of our mans in San Fran. He'll be wearing the Rift, playing TF2 and delivering his impressions later this week.

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.

Latest in VR Hardware
A woman wearing a VR headset with dramatic, colourful lighting across the background
'World’s smallest LEDs' could lead to accurately lit screens with 127,000 pixels per inch and much more immersive VR
Varjo Aero
Nvidia confirms 'open issue' with Varjo Aero VR headsets and RTX 50-series graphics cards after affected users ask for help
A "sensor-actuator–coupled gustatory interface chemically connecting virtual and real environments for remote tasting," or essentially a virtual reality tongue in an artificial mouth
Would you like to taste fish soup in VR? Me neither, but this electronic tongue does it anyway
Varjo Aero
Varjo Aero VR headsets seem to be not working on RTX 5090s, and its community is opting for strange solutions while waiting for an Nvidia driver release to fix it
A still from a YouTube video showing The Swedish Maker cutting a piece of wood with power tools while wearing a Meta Quest 3 VR headset.
YouTuber The Swedish Maker wears a Meta Quest 3 VR headset for his entire woodworking project and miraculously emerges with all fingers intact
The HTC Vive XR Elite front three quarter angle
Google is bulk buying HTC Vive engineers to help Android XR become a platform that can rival Meta's VR/AR dominance
Latest in News
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened
Junah beginning a battle in Metaphor: ReFantazio.
Today's RPG fans are 'very sensitive to feeling like they wasted time' when they die, says Metaphor: ReFantazio battle planner—but Atlus still made combat hard anyway
Image of Cersei Lanniser from Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Steam early access trailer
A new Game of Thrones RPG is coming to Steam today with a cast of 'familiar faces,' which is good because it's really the only way to tell it's a GoT game at all
The new Prime Asset featured in the upcoming update for the Outlast Trials.
The Outlast Trials puts its already paranoid players under surveillance for a time-limited story event
A Viera looking confused in Final Fantasy 14.
Old armor continues to fall victim to Final Fantasy 14's bizarre two-channel dye system, unless you're super into changing the colour of teeny-tiny eyelets: 'Why even bother at this point?'
Starfield: Shattered Space
By the time Bethesda was on Starfield, you'd 'basically get in trouble' for breaking schedule, says former dev: 'A lot of the great stuff within Skyrim came from having the freedom to do what you want'