Nvidia Exclusively Using UE4 for Product Presentations
Nvidia said on Wednesday that for the first time ever, it is exclusively using a third-party game engine to create product presentations. Previously the company used its own internal engine to render products and demos.
Naturally the engine of choice is Unreal Engine 4 which is baked fresh each day by backyard neighbor Epic Games located in North Carolina's Research Triangle area (along with Lenovo, Red Hat etc). Nvidia said that the first use of UE4 was actually seen during CES 2013 back in January, as it rendered Project SHIELD’s full-size, console-grade controller and the Tegra 4 GPU.
"Nvidia heavily relied on the Unreal Matinee cinematic system to create the fly-through video which provided the world’s first glimpse of Project SHIELD and played during their CES keynote," the company said. "This is the first time Nvidia engineers have used a third-party game engine."
Both the Project SHIELD Android-based console and the Tegra 4 Soc were revealed in January during the show. The "Wayne" 28-nm Tegra 4 chip, designed for high-end smartphones and tablets, is the foundation of Nvidia's gaming gadget, packing four ARM Cortex-A15 processor cores and 72 custom GeForce GPU cores.
As for Project SHIELD itself, it's built like a game console controller, but packs its own 5-inch 720p multi-touch display, and the ability to stream PC games from a desktop or laptop using a Kepler-based GPU (GTX 650 or GTX 660M) or higher. It's amazingly light in weight, and supports 802.11n 2x2 MIMO wireless connectivity for seemingly latency-free gaming.
“Nvidia are always on the cutting edge, and we were thrilled to be a part of their awesome Project SHIELD introduction,” said Mark Rein, vice president and co-founder of Epic Games. “The visuals their team are producing using Unreal Engine 4 in real time are fantastic, and they're already exceeding some of the best pre-rendered visuals of only a few short years ago.”
Nvidia said during GTC 2013 last month that Project SHIELD is all set for a 2Q13 release.
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.
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dillonpeterliam If I had a GTX 650 or higher in my PC, I wouldn't be downgrading my experience just to play on a portable handheld, I'd rather use my full screen monitor at 1080 rather than a 5 inch 720 screen. Hope they price this very competitively, if not the 3DS and VIta will own it.Reply -
Cash091 I played Skyrim on it and it looked damn good on that screen. What would make this thing BOMB the competition is if they used GRID for graphics and cut out your computer completely. Or, let you use your computer for other applications while you were playing games. If my wife wants to use the PC I could still game on the Shield.Reply -
MANOFKRYPTONAK I hate the new Toms, too many adds and crap. I feel like I'm on a shady site with all of this junk. I still have hope...Reply -
MANOFKRYPTONAK But if you could still run other applications while playing it would be awesome. It would be great for kids. Or if the misses is on the computer.Reply