Unreal Engine 4.8 Has Been Released With A Massive List Of Changes

Multiplatform VR support, procedural foliage systems and plugins from select partners are among the changes.

This update is the largest to date, according to the announcement. The page has a list of featured highlights:

• Grass Rendering and Procedural Foliage Systems - We've optimized our Grass Systems for use with large open worlds. Use it to produce huge amounts of grass and ground cover with temporal LOD cross-fading. We're also releasing an experimental preview of the procedural foliage system we used to paint foliage across our GDC 2015 Kite Demo.
• Plugins Available in Marketplace - We've partnered with Allegorithmic to provide our first plugin available in Marketplace. Download the plugin today, and look for more plugins from select partners in the future!
• Post Processing Enhancements and Tools - Major increase in accuracy of our Motion Blur, including morph target animations that can now generate motion blur. We've also updated our depth of field to be more physically-based, as well as added a new Tone Mapper to achieve more filmic look.
• Multiplatform VR Support - Support for all the latest VR hardware including Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, Steam VR and HTC Vive, Leap Motion, and Sony's Project Morpheus for PlayStation 4
• Network Replays - "Scrubbable" network replays with rewind support and live time scrubbing.
• Asset Size Mapper - Visualize the memory footprint of game assets in an interactive tree map UI.

The full release notes also list a large number of bug fixes and updates related to both the editor and engine.

If you haven't seen it, a feature trailer was released earlier this year to display the capabilities of their tech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMF1Th5HK9A Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.