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A few days ago, Epic released the first preview of Unreal Engine 4.23 for the developer community to check out its features and report back in case of any issues, before the final release. This version has new additions of Skin Weight Profiles, VR Scouting tools, New Pro Video Codecs and many updates on features like XR, animation, core, virtual production, gameplay and scripting, audio and more.

The previous version, Unreal Engine 4.22 focused on adding photorealism in real-time environments.

Some updates in Unreal Engine 4.23

XR

Hololens 2 Native Support: With updates to the Stereo Panoramic Capture tool, it will be much easier to capture high-quality stereoscopic stills and videos of the virtual world in industry-standard formats, and to view those captures in an Oculus or GearVR headset.

Stereo Panoramic capture Tool Improvements: This will make it easy to capture high-quality stereoscopic stills and videos of the virtual world in industry-standard formats.

Animation

Skin Weight Profiles: The new Skin Weight Profile system will enable users to override the original Skin Weights that are stored with a Skeletal Mesh.

Animation Streaming: This is aimed at improving memory management for animation data.

Sub Animation Graphs: New Sub Anim Graphs will allow dynamic switching of sub-sections of an Animation Graph, enabling multi-user-collaboration and memory savings for vaulted or unavailable items.

Core

Unreal Insights Tool: This will help developers to collect and analyze data about the Engine’s behavior in a uniform fashion. This system has three components:

  • The Trace System API will gather information from runtime systems in a consistent format and captures it for later processing. Multiple live sessions can contribute data at the same time.
  • The Analysis API will process data from the Trace System API, and convert it into a form that the Unreal Insights tool can use.
  • The Unreal Insights tool will provide an interactive visualization of data processed through the Analysis API, which will provide developers with a unified interface for stats, logs, and metrics from their application.

Virtual production

  • Remote Control over HTTP
  • Extended LiveLink Plugin
  • New VR Scouting tools
  • New Pro Video Codecs
  • nDisplay: Warp and Blend for Curved Surfaces
  • Virtual Camera Improvements

Gameplay & Scripting

UMG Widget Diffing: Expanded and improved Blueprint Diffing will now support Widget Blueprints as well as Actor and Animation Blueprints.

Audio

Open Sound Control: It will enable a native implementation of the Open Sound Control (OSC) standard in an Unreal Engine plugin.

Wave Table Synthesis: The new monophonic Wavetable synthesizer leverages UE4’s built-in curve editor to author the time-domain wavetables, enabling a wide range of sound design capabilities can be driven by gameplay parameters.

There are many more updates provided for the Editor, Niagara editor, Physics simulation, Rendering system and the Sequencer multi-track editor in Unreal Engine 4.23.

The Unreal Engine team has notified users that the preview release is not fully quality tested, hence should be considered as unstable until the final release.

Users are excited to try the latest version of Unreal Engine 4.23.

Visit the Unreal Engine page for more details.

Read Next

Unreal Engine 4.22 update: support added for Microsoft’s DirectX Raytracing (DXR)

Unreal Engine 4.20 released with focus on mobile and immersive (AR/VR/MR) devices

What’s new in Unreal Engine 4.19?

Vincy Davis
A born storyteller turned writer!