Unreal Engine 4.21 Released, Linux Now Defaults To Vulkan

[theriddick]

Pathfinder Kingmaker uses a Unity engine but its clearly OpenGL and runs at %60 performance of windows version, rather disappointing because some areas slow down to 20-30fps so imagine what its like for Linux users! Using Vulkan surely would help resolve allot of that perf gap!

[Buntolo]

Meh. UE, or Unity aren't *that* interesting in a Linux environment. UE and Unity aren't, in my experience, easily customizable.
In Linux, if you feel like tinkering then you should be able to do that.
With U(E)/nity you start it up, and then it becomes boring super fast and you wind up perusing tutorials hoping that you'll find some inspiriation, and you never do

1) Are they customisable on Windows?
2) Is there any alternative?
3) I don't think they've to be entertaining, they're tool for the makers, l feel they're like a CAD or CAM program/suite.

[miabrahams]

Good thing there's Godot. In 30 seconds I had a scene up with Working VR on my PSVR headset. I just want some good tutorials on building a cockpit and animating enemies.

It's the same in Unreal. Create a new project and select VR template.

[miabrahams]

1) Are they customisable on Windows?
2) Is there any alternative?
3) I don't think they've to be entertaining, they're tool for the makers, l feel they're like a CAD or CAM program/suite.

Maybe AdamOne is thinking of older versions of Unreal? Previously, compiling for Linux was considered a second class citizen and they recommended a Windows->Linux cross-compile, but that's no longer the case. The major limitation is that only Ubuntu is officially supported.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Platforms/Linux/BeginnerLinuxDeveloper/SettingUpAnUnrealWorkflow

UE is hard to beat for realtime CG content creation. Games, arch viz, VR, realtime cinema, even a kid's show called Zafari. It's not a game, it's for making games.

[starshipeleven]

Meh. UE, or Unity aren't *that* interesting in a Linux environment. UE and Unity aren't, in my experience, easily customizable.
In Linux, if you feel like tinkering then you should be able to do that.
With U(E)/nity you start it up, and then it becomes boring super fast and you wind up perusing tutorials hoping that you'll find some inspiriation, and you never do

I was under the impression that game engines were supposed to be used as-is to save a bunch of work in game design, not tinkered with.

[uid313]

It is too bad that Unreal Tournament is abandoned.

[Naquatis]

Would be nice if ue 4.21.0 on Linux would be as stable as ue 4.20.0 but it is not. From my observation ue 4.21.0 on mesa amdgpu with radv is crashing in every situation. I am sure everybody who are using ue4 seriously using it on Windows and crosscompile stuff for Linux on Windows and that really hurts if you are using Linux as your main operating system.

[jonbitzen]

A few observations:

- The editor runs shader model 5, which is desktop class. No reason to expect less from a baked production build using the same editor version

- The renderer supports more than 16 textures per shader, which was the chief limitation imposed by OpenGL 4.3, and will allow many advanced materials to work without modification on Linux. Many advanced materials use more than 16 textures even in stock assets, and I suspect this alone would have limited developers ability to port games as-is to Linux (aside from issues related to third party middleware)

- A quick run of the default scene shows many graphical glitches have been fixed.

- A quick review of stock assets that use advanced materials shows me they run without error (thinking of some the pricier forest assets that use a large number of textures from the Unreal Marketplace that I have access to)

- startup log messages no longer look like interim debug statements.

I think there is every reason to be optimistic about this release for future games on Linux. I wouldn’t expect backports, as I know from experience that Epic deprecates parts of their API with every release, and then completely remove it on the one following. It’s the price of progress.

Here’s to hoping for the best,

jonbitzen

[Vash63]

A few observations:

- The editor runs shader model 5, which is desktop class. No reason to expect less from a baked production build using the same editor version

- The renderer supports more than 16 textures per shader, which was the chief limitation imposed by OpenGL 4.3, and will allow many advanced materials to work without modification on Linux. Many advanced materials use more than 16 textures even in stock assets, and I suspect this alone would have limited developers ability to port games as-is to Linux (aside from issues related to third party middleware)

- A quick run of the default scene shows many graphical glitches have been fixed.

- A quick review of stock assets that use advanced materials shows me they run without error (thinking of some the pricier forest assets that use a large number of textures from the Unreal Marketplace that I have access to)

- startup log messages no longer look like interim debug statements.

I think there is every reason to be optimistic about this release for future games on Linux. I wouldn’t expect backports, as I know from experience that Epic deprecates parts of their API with every release, and then completely remove it on the one following. It’s the price of progress.

Here’s to hoping for the best,

jonbitzen

This is awesome news, thanks for testing all of that! Sounds like their Trello story is mostly on multithreading and performance updates then and it's finally desktop-class. Any performance numbers vs. DX11 or DX12?

[Naquatis]

Now I got a little bit more time and what I found maybe not that funny for people who like Linux. Even a crosscompiled binary from ue 4.21 crashing Kernel 4.19.4 so hard that you are not able to ping the system anymore. In this situation I came to the point where I understand that Apple created Metal.