Unity vs Unreal Engine for VR
— Technical aspects, specs and notes
Unity vs Unreal is one of the on-going silent battles within the XR (extended reality) Community. While doing my research into being a VR Developer, I made a series of notes to help myself understand better. This article renders information and technical specs for both software in regards to VR experiences.
It’s important to choose the right platform for yourself when starting out. And it’s efficient to get familiar with the development process in one before starting out with another.
Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first announced as a Mac OS X game engine and updated to support a wide variety gradually. Unreal Engine was created as a game development engine within Epic Games (the face behind Fortnite) to primarily be used for first person-shooter games with interactive experiences, and immersive virtual worlds.
Unity
Unity is younger than Unreal, but it still features many of the same benefits. Unity has detailed documentation that’s easy to understand, making it accessible for you to learn as you build.
It has a wide platform coverage with an XR SDK (software development kit) that includes plugins for popular AR/VR tools such as ARCore XR, Oculus XR and Windows XR, enabling you to publish for multiple VR headsets.
Drop-in Toolkits from Unity like the XR Interaction Toolkit saves time and resources when you build games for VR, AR, and other types of mixed reality.
Unity supports a high performance with a High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). It is one of the most popular mobile game development tools on the market, especially with smartphones getting powerful, and making it easier to run VR games on them.
Here’s a small selection of some specs for Unity from makeuseof.com :
Compatible platforms: Windows PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Google Stadia, macOS, iOS, Android, ARKit, ARCore, Oculus, Microsoft HoloLens, Windows Mixed Reality, Playstation VR, and WebGL.
Supported programming languages: C#, Unity Visual Scripting, and external DLLs.
Editing software: Unity Editor.
Unreal Engine
With a Full XR Support, you can use Unreal’s huge range of XR Platforms to create games of all different types (AR,VR,MR).
Though Unreal lacks in level with Unity for mobile game development, it has a wide platform coverage and makes for a great choice if you’re looking to build across platforms.
Unreal’s main selling point is their High-fidelity graphics. With a machine powerful enough to optimize them, Unreal can bring you hyper-realistic results, making it perfect for immersive experiences and VR games.
A lot of developers appreciate the old and native C++ coding that comes with Unreal. C++ is a very powerful language and can give your greater control over your creation, compared to what you can create with C#. Though this isn’t always a benefit for all developers.
Here’s a small selection of some specs for Unreal from makeuseof.com :
Compatible platforms: Windows PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Google Stadia, macOS, iOS, Android, ARKit, ARCore, OpenXR, SteamVR, Oculus, Linux, and SteamDeck.
Supported programming languages: C++ and Blueprint Visual Scripting.
Editing software: Unreal Editor/UDK (Unreal Development Kit).
One might agree with you more than the other. Go with your gut, it’s important you enjoy, what you work in. While picking your software, make sure you have the right machine you use should enable complete usage from the software to optimize your creations. For example, it’s better to have a powerful machine set up or a laptop capable of handling the game engine as you choose to work on Unreal Engine. If you’re still apprehensive, some knowledge about the different languages in each might help still the water for you. Check out the languages section in How to be a VR Developer.
