I love the smell of UnrealEd crashing in the morning. – tarquin
Unreal Engine 3
Template:Infobox software
Unreal Engine 3 is a computer game engine developed by Epic Games. It is the third generation of Unreal Technology (UE3), designed for DirectX 9/10 PCs, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Its renderer supports many advanced techniques including HDRR, per-pixel lighting, and dynamic shadows, and builds upon the tools available in previous versions of the engine.
Epic has used this version of the engine for their in-house games Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War and an improved version for Gears of War 2. Due to aggressive licensing, this current iteration has garnered a great deal of support from several big licensees, including Atari, Activision, Capcom, Disney, Konami, Koei, 2K Games, Midway Games, THQ, Ubisoft, Sega, Sony, Electronic Arts, Square Enix, 3D Realms and more.
Updates
Epic Games announced at GDC 2009 some improvements made to the Unreal Engine 3. These included
- High-quality static lighting with next-generation effects, such as soft shadows with accurate penumbrae, diffuse and specular inter-reflection and color bleeding
- The ability to add fracture effects to static meshes to simulate destructible environments
- soft-body physics
- Simulation of large crowds.
Epic Games released the Unreal Development Kit on 5th of November 2009, The UDK is a standalone version of the Unreal Engine 3 free for non-commercial use, see UDK Launch.
Non-Gaming Use
In addition to the game industry, UE3 has also seen adoption by many non-gaming projects including construction simulation and design, driving simulation, virtual reality shopping malls and film storyboards.
In December 2009, Epic demoed UE3 running on Apple's 3rd generation IPod touch. They said that this will also support iPhone 3GS, and also an unknown mobile platform set to be unveiled at CES 2010.link
Games using or licensing Unreal Engine 3
- Main article: List of Unreal Engine games#Unreal Engine 3
