
Unreal Engine 4.12 released - waivek
https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-4-12-released
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pilif
Completely tangential, but why is

 _> NEW: TV SAFE ZONE DEBUGGING_

still a thing that needs to be added to a brand new engine targeting the
latest console generation. It's 2016. Why do TVs still do overscan? And why
the hell are there still TVs being produced where overscan can't be turned
off?

This will never change if we accept the status quo and actually _add_ features
to help with this mess.

What should happen is that devices and software should assume overscan to be
off and then _maybe_ allow for manual correction.

~~~
Jasper_
> And why the hell are there still TVs being produced where overscan can't be
> turned off?

Because you wanted the price of a new HDTV to be $200. Consumer electronics
are focused mostly on price, rarely on quality. The menus for most of these
devices are incomprehensible and the new fad is IoT and Smart TVs, not
usability. HDMI has a flag you can set to say "please don't overscan", but I
know of absolutely 0 TVs that respect it.

Also, because standards and legacy content means that content is produced for
older standards. Backwards compatibility in broadcast TV has always been
important. With a simple converter box, you can view signals from the 1950s on
a modern TV. So we can't just turn overscan off globally for everyone.

~~~
pilif
> Because you wanted the price of a new HDTV to be $200.

actually, performing overscan requires _more_ functionality on the TV. That's
what I think is so crazy. You have a digital signal producer (the console), a
digital link (the HDMI cable) and a digital signal consumer (the TV).

And then you add additional code to the TV to cut off some pixels from the
digitally fed signal and then scale the resulting image.

As this is significant additional functionality compared to just showing the
image you're being fed, I don't buy the pricing argument at all. If you wanted
it to be cheap, just don't overscan.

The cost of doing overscan at all must be much higher than the cost for a
toggle to turn if off.

~~~
lfowles
Presumably you already have some scaling mechanism for non-native resolution
inputs already.

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hising
This is how a new release should be communicated to the community. Awesome
post and update with both overall feature walkthrough and a more thorough and
detailed spec about what has actually changed down to the nitty-gritty parts
of the release. Good job!

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exodust
The new Sequencer tool that replaces Matinee is the big new exciting thing in
this release. If it goes as planned we'll see a lot of animators using Unreal
without ever needing or caring about the gaming side of things.

I'm still learning Unreal for game dev, but finding the Blueprint system quite
difficult to get to grips with. Coming from javascript, I thought it would be
easy, but I never seem to know what node to connect to what module for the
outcome intended. I guess I will stick with it. I felt the same when I first
started with Jquery, I hated it for months then began to enjoy it.

~~~
wlesieutre
I dabbled with Blueprints a while back, and I got a strong impression that
experience with C++ is still valuable background because it gives you a better
grip on the types and the general structuring of how the parts communicate. To
a pretty large degree you're composing C++ bits and pieces visually, but it
makes a lot more sense if you can intuit why something is structured the way
it is. And that all ties back to the underlying engine.

~~~
exodust
Yes I think in my case I need to push through that language learning stage
where you have the documentation open constantly looking up methods,
selectors... forums posts from other users on tricks and shortcuts. I was
hoping blueprints were more intuitive, but it still has a complex syntax of
its own nature -nice challenge.

Marketplace is also interesting.. very good, but sometimes the things sold
could be assembled easily by just having the required blueprints. So I wonder
if this creates a sort of restrained help community on the sharing and caring
front of blueprints and solutions to common need such as "Info bubbles on any
object! just $19.99 now from the market" and it's just a handful of blueprints
essentially - at least for the non-asset offers on the market. Javascript has
always been generous and happy to share code snippets and plugins and so on,
but in Unreal there's this economy around that, which is cool if a bit
cunning.

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bobbles
Wow that VR editor is unreal! (hurr)

Being able to build the 'world' and unleash artists into it with that would be
fantastic

~~~
rawnlq
Unity has something similar:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzjxRi5J4XI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzjxRi5J4XI)

Man, just 7 years ago this level of world building was science fiction:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzFpg271sm8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzFpg271sm8)

~~~
voltagex_
Thank you for linking me to that short film - it's wonderful.

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sievebrain
I continue to be blown away that such a powerful and flexible piece of
technology is completely open source. Bravo Epic!

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pinum
Those are some seriously impressive features. I kept scrolling down and every
single addition seemed useful.

Really hope I get to work with this engine some time.

~~~
TrevorJ
It's free to use, snag a copy and play around :)

