Epic Games Releases Unreal Engine 4.11 Preview To Dev Community

By Kevin Carbotte
published

Epic Games announced the release of the first preview build of the upcoming Unreal Engine 4.11 update. The company highlighted the details of the release in a post on the UE community forum.

Epic Games said the Unreal Engine 4.11 preview 1 is available now but cautioned that the preview should not be considered a stable build. The company has not had the chance to fully test the updates, and it remains under “heavy active development.” The company urged developers not to convert their active projects to the preview build, suggesting making a copy for testing purposes instead.

Epic Games said the UE 4.11 preview period will be longer than past build previews, as the team is hoping to find as many bugs as possible before the final release and believes that the longer preview period will grant developers more time to discover and report issues. The company said that this preview build is less stable than preview 1 of 4.10 was and that it debated withholding the release but ultimately decided that it would rather let the early adopters explore the new build through the holidays.

Epic Games said that UE4.11 comes with a number of new rendering features such as the New Physically Based Shading Model for eyes, cloth and realistic hair. EU4.11 Preview 1 also introduces new platform updates such as support for Metal on Mac and Visual Studio 2015 on XboxOne. For the complete list of updates that you can expect in the current preview build, see the Unreal Engine forum post with all the details.

The Unreal Engine 4.11 Preview 1 is available through the Epic Games Launcher and GitHub. The company asks that if you find a bug, report it to the Bug Report section of the Unreal Engine AnswerHub.

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Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Cryio
    Still no final DX12 implementation ?
    Reply
  • kcarbotte
    Still no final DX12 implementation ?

    the current release notes don't say anything about DX12 that I noticed.
    Epic did say that Preview 1 is just a selection of the full UE4.11 update.
    Reply
  • toddybody
    That hair effect (especially on the left) is superb. I've been disappointed by the recent TressFX and nVidia Hairworks features as of late. Their movement is "ok', but strands are treated as thick units...making it look like straw.

    As much as I'm excited about DX12...I'm still hesitant regarding developer's ability/desire to commit to optimized PC titles.
    Reply
  • skit75
    @ toddybody

    I believe many devs have been waiting for this and the associated hand-holding before being able to implement DX12 into games. If I recall, there was a reddit AMA where the ARK:SE developers said just that and in patch notes, it has continually been postponed, apparently to little or no fault of their own. Maybe it will finally happen.... in January =) Correct me please... if am off-base in that line of thinking.
    Reply
  • cats_Paw
    This company seems to be doing quite a decent job.
    So far most stuff looks really promising in Unreal Engine 4.
    Reply