Unreal game engine licensed to US government

[pezz]

The Unreal Engine powers numerous top-tier games like Mass Effect 3, Batman: Arkham City, and the Gears of War series. It appears that the newest Unreal Engine is going to be making an appearance in some unexpected places; specifically the US government. No, the folks in Washington haven’t been passing Xboxes around — get ready for Unreal-based simulations designed by the FBI, US Army, and other government agencies.

Epic Games develops the engine, which is one of the most popular cross-platform game technologies, and has partnered with Virtual Heroes to ink the government deal which is described as “long-term.” Epic will assist the FBI and others in using Unreal for content on the web, consoles, and mobile devices. No one is saying just how much Epic is being paid for the license just yet, but multiple millions seems likely.

http://www.geek.com/articles/games/u...ment-20120329/

[khat17]

So why people don't want to run some UT with us? LOL. I'm sure that the people here who play FPS games would do well on a battlefield. Not necessarily in BF, but we would survive a zombie apocalypse

[semitop]

Still can't figure why people go with Unreal. Is there something about its usability? Cause the games that come from it do not look like they are using a quality engine. I'd go so far as saying gaming would be better if that engine was not around. So many others do it better =/

1 comparison you could make is unreal and cryengine or even frostbite (doubt the gov could get that one though). Both allow better and more realistic graphics, ai, physics etc. There has to be something in terms of usability or pricing that is making people use unreal. Or it's just that they are used to the engine and learning/modifying something new would suck.

Probably is good enough for the government's usage plans.

[Makkah]

I don't know much about frostbite, but cryengine sucks outside of FPS games. Unreal is applicable with pretty much everything, as we've seen. TPS, action games, hell even fighting games (the new Mortal Kombat). Unreal script uses a state machine system too which is very easy to code for.

[carey]

@khat17

Epic will assist the FBI and others in using Unreal for content on the web, consoles, and mobile devices.

Ur works the same everywhere. IIRC, the engine works with the given graphical driver backend (OpenGL,D3D etc.). I don't think I have ever successfully run any other engine on an OS other than Windows.

[semitop]

I don't know much about frostbite, but cryengine sucks outside of FPS games.

how do you know that?

Unreal is applicable with pretty much everything, as we've seen. TPS, action games, hell even fighting games (the new Mortal Kombat). Unreal script uses a state machine system too which is very easy to code for.

I figured it was something like that.

[Makkah]

how do you know that?

I was interested in trying it and asked people who've used it. It's not impossible to make other game types, but the workarounds you'll need are tedious apparently.