When it comes to making the first choices in development for XR, the engine which you use to create your game is very important. This step is laying the fundamentals for everything else that is coming afterwards. The two platforms that stand out the most for their big community, overall quality and popularity are Unreal Engine and Unity. Today we want to give you a comparison of the two engines side to side to help you decide what is the right choice for you.
Don’t want to read the full article? Have a look at our XR BROS Video:
Which ENGINE is better, UNREAL or UNITY? — YouTube
Graphics
Firstly there is a big debate going on as if to what engine has the better graphics, however keep in mind that for beginners and independent developers the graphics don’t make that much of a difference because it is very unlikely to find such a high level of graphic quality in a game anyways, especially if it’s in VR or AR.
Both of the engines are on the highest standard of the industry, allowing to make impressive 3D renderings in real time that are even used for filming live with computer-generated backgrounds. While Unity is famously used for developing 2D games, unreal Engine stopped developing further in that direction.
Learning Curve
If you are just getting started with development and are new to both of the programs, you might be most interested in how fast you can actually learn to develop a game. The learning curve is what keeps you motivated throughout the process and is an important part of every game development.
Not only does Unity have the easier interface, it also has a lot of material and documentation to learn from since it started earlier to become a free software.
It is said on the other hand that Unreal has an Interface that is a lot harder to understand, in terms of the documentation and learning material that is about there Unreal is catching up, however Unity clearly wins when it comes to documentation, especially in the coding part which is the core of every game.
Coding
Both engines require Coding/ Game Logic. While both programs offer visual Scripting solutions where you can work around writing code by yourself and rather use Nodes and Visual blocks to connect logic statements, you still need to understand a certain amount of the logic of game making.
The coding language of Unity is C#, which is said to be a lot easier to learn than Unreal’ s C++.
Unity provides 2 Visual scripting solutions called “Playmaker” and “Bolt”.
Unreal on the other hand offers Blueprints which is a great way to get started to develop games. There are even examples for games that have been made exclusively with these tools, for example Unity’s First Tree:
The First Tree — Launch Trailer | PS4 — YouTube
Tools
Both engines have advantages and disadvantages, while Unity has a lot of Beta versions that don’t work necessarily well always, they stand out with a very fast Importing and compiling system that makes the process of fast prototyping and iterations flawless.
Unreal on the other hand might sometimes need 4 or 5 times more time for compiling, which of course sums up if you are working on big projects.
While Unity provides you with additional features such as the Unity analytics, that allows you to learn who are the players downloading and playing your game, Unreal has better inbuilt tools that automate a lot of your work while optimizing the workflow.
A very cool thing about Unreal is that they made the entire Source code available on GitHub for public use, meaning you could technically build your own version of the Engine and manipulate it as desired.
Unreal Engine on GitHub — Unreal Engine
Apart from that, Unreal is giving away high quality assets all the time, though their market place is a lot smaller than the Unity Assets store.
Pricing
Another key aspect of game development is the rentability. You can not spend months of time into a product without having some kind of revenue. Of course the pricing and the conditions of selling your product plays a huge role and here it gets really interesting:
Unity is free for beginners. At a certain point, when the revenue or funding is getting higher than 100.000 Dollars within a year, you have to choose the 400 dollar per year per seat plan.
The biggest package includes 20 seats for 4000 Dollars a month with technical and customer support, in App purchases and possibilities of building your own server.
Unreal offers another solution for the pricing: Until your product reaches up to 1 Million Dollars of revenue, not only using the application but also the selling of the product goes without any taxes or payment. After that the company will ask you for a tax of 5 percent, which is quite small.
Community
As we said earlier, since Unity has been a free to use software for longer time, the community is bigger. However Unreal is getting closer and closer to reach the same amount of people using their engine. Both companies try to offer a big variety of events, common asked questions and Solutions Platforms. Lately the both platforms also gained great popularity because of their ability to render and process 3D environments in real time, which makes them really interesting not only for game developers but also for filmmakers. Besides that, Realtime graphics are essential for XR applications as well.
Conclusion
As we saw, both Unity and Unreal Engine have unique advantages and it is not easy to decide, which one is fitting more. In the end it might boil down to the question of how much you are personally interested in investing time in learning the coding languages. While Unreal has really good offers concerning the pricing, Unity has a bigger community and is easier to learn for beginners. What is your opinion? Which platform do you prefer?
