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sobchak
Participant
March 29, 2013

Will the free UDK support Oculus Rift?

I recently downloaded the free version of Unreal 3 Developers Kit and am building out a few test worlds in anticipation for my Oculus arrival. Today I've been reading over the newly released Oculus SDK documentation and found the following line regarding UDK on page 4:
You will need a full UE3 license to access the version of Unreal with Oculus integration.

I just want to make sure, and hopefully get some verification or reasoning:
Will I be able to play around with UDK and Oculus if I don't buy an Unreal Engine 3 license ($400?)?
    This topic has been closed for replies.

    9 replies

    CaliberMengsk
    Up and Coming
    March 29, 2013
    I don't know where you got the UE3 being only $400 from, but it's not likely to be true. While developers can't say specifically what they pay for the license, there is a general consensus that it's probably somewhere around $50,000 for a full UE3 license. Even if it's not quite that high, it's still going to be more then $400, unless you've talked with an Epic Games sales person directly, and they would be giving you an extremely good deal. Engines like Unreal will not use third parties to sell their licenses, and if you are getting that price from a third party, it's likely a scam.

    The only way I could see them selling it that low is a student license.

    Either way, I don't know UDK well enough to know if it will be supported or not. If UDK can import and use things like C++ or C# plugins for free, then it will likely work with UDK, if not, it will be the same as unity and you'll have to get the full professional version of the unreal engine, which will NOT be cheap.
    Current Project: Virtual Reality Glove project
    Cheshyr
    Up and Coming
    March 29, 2013
    Kickstarter Update #25 announced an Oculus ready version of the UDK. That was on March 25th, and likely didn't make it into the edit list for the SDK documentation. This was reinforced in Update #26, so I think it's safe to say it's happening.

    UDK licensing is: Free for personal use. $100 license for commercial use. 25% royalties once you exceed $50k revenue.

    Last I heard, ETA was April for Oculus ready UDK.
    sobchakAuthor
    Participant
    March 29, 2013
    Ah, great. Thanks for your prompt replies. I didn't mean to confuse the question by including a hastily googled dollar amount in there. Thanks for the clarifications.
    Cheshyr
    Up and Coming
    March 29, 2013
    No worries. I've been trying to stay on top of the Game Engine Shuffle.

    The news of Unity3D requiring a Pro license shook things up a bit, but you can still do quite a bit with the 4 months free. The guys at Oculus were on the ball, and got the UDK deal sorted out very shortly after, and I suspect UDK is going to be the primary hobbiest platform for the Rift. The guys from GarageGames are doing some excellent integration work on Torque 3D for both the Oculus and the Hydra, so they'll likely be a contender as well. There was mention of a raw C++ demo as well, in case we wanted to grow our own engine from scratch. I'm sure there are others I'm missing.

    So, you have plenty of options and price-points to choose from for your development. The fun part will be choosing the one appropriate for your skill level and expendable income. At least, that's the hard part for me.
    owenwp
    Up and Coming
    March 29, 2013
    UDK can import DLLs just fine btw. So other things like the Hydra work too.
    edzieba
    Up and Coming
    March 29, 2013
    Press release directly from Epic themselves. The free UDK will include Rift support, and "he custom, Oculus-ready version of UDK will be available from the Oculus Developer Center the first week of April".
    Anonymous
    March 30, 2013
    We'll be releasing a custom, Oculus-ready version of the UDK in early April. Just like the current UDK, it'll be available to everyone.

    Just to clear up any confusion, the UDK and UE3 are slightly different, although it's the same engine under the hood. UDK is the free version of UE3, and UDK doesn't include the native source code for UE3.

    You can learn more about the UDK at http://www.unrealengine.com/udk/.

    Hope this helps!
    XeroPhane
    New Participant
    April 20, 2013
    Any chance we could get source classes for working with Oculus in an independent project, and not buried within altered base classes? Editing the base and natives UDK files instead of extending from them is generally bad practice and not easily modular. Having the ability to grab your Stereo3D and Oculus classes, place them as they fit best into our game will really be more helpful than the Oculus-custom UDK out for download now.
    JamToday
    New Participant
    May 9, 2013
    Hi guys, noted that the 1.2 SDK overview document (for SDK 0.2) still only refers to the Unity and UE3 integration and does not mention UDK as yet. I can see the special version of UDK which uses SDK 0.1 and this is the version i currently use. Has anybody read any info on the ongoing support/release strategy? I.e. whether or not UDK will continue to be supported as well as Unity.

    Am guessing that the majority of dev is currently taking place on Unity so that integration of this has been prioritised (hence the lack of a UDK with 0.2).

    (To be honest, I have loads to be getting on with so not really desperate for another version, but just curious :p)

    Thanks!
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