
Unity vs. Unreal Engine: Which Is Better for XR Development - barbelldan
https://circuitstream.com/blog/unity-vs-unreal/
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g82918
Last month I was attempting a game in Unreal Engine for fun. The article does
a decent job describing some of the problems. I know C++ and use C++17 at my
job, so it wasn't an issue. One minor point is that Unity just tends to work.
Unreal engine has some odd bugs some times and the lack of community I think
is a huge downside. I have made a few games in Unity and it is a lot easier to
find help and free support.

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selman89
Unity “just tends to work” for Hello Worlds and other hobby-size projects, but
when you start building up components and relying on it’s lighting system, for
example, to cooperate with you, trouble is inevitable.

Unreal has a better rendering system in my experience, and although this
mostly matters for realism, it can also be very valuable in other situations.

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barbelldan
I've heard it from Unity expert themselves telling you can achieve the same
quality (that's why I've included the performance and graphic comparison).

One thing that maybe the "poisoning the well" element is the fact Unity had a
generous freemium open doors for hobby developers, which means there's tons of
project that are meh while Unreal Engine is well used in creation of AAA
games.

Have you tried them both? Is Unreal really that much better for rendering?

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mrguyorama
The way I've heard it is that Unreal has better defaults in it's rendering
pipeline, producing a slightly more "professional" look despite a lack of
ability. Having said that, I was unable to wrap my head around Unreal to make
a toy project with it, but even the demo project it has looks better than my
game in Unity

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timavr
Here is the top selling list of VR games on Steam.

Boneworks - Unity

Westworld Awakening - Unreal

Beat Saber - Unity

Blade & Sorcery - Unity

Pavlov VR - Unreal

Pistol Whip - Unity

Skyrim VR - Internal

Fallout 4 VR - Internal

Superhot VR - Unity

Layers of Fear VR - Unreal

Zero Caliber VR - Unreal

Moss - Unreal

5 - Unity, 5 - Unreal, 2 - Internal. Depends on a game type you wanna build
and perks of each engine.(grants etc)

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mrguyorama
Worth noting, there is a HUGE difference in quality and jankiness of those
games, sometimes irrespective of engine

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djmips
After using both Unity and Unreal Engine for XR Development, my personal
favorite is Unreal only for the fact that I can still look at the source code
of the engine if something weird is happening and I can even fix it myself.
That's the main reason. Unity seems to be catching up a bit in the performance
area but I still feel that UE4 is ahead.

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jrickert
They don't take pull requests, but Unity has at least had their source code
published for reference for a while.

[https://github.com/Unity-
Technologies/UnityCsReference](https://github.com/Unity-
Technologies/UnityCsReference)

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barbelldan
There's an elephant in the room comparing the two. A month ago, Epic (Unreal
Engine) acquired Quixel Megascans - a company which makes photorealistis
materials.

This scans are going to be included in for free in UE4. This is a huge deal
since all developers will have access to 100,000+ sleek assets from the start.

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thedaemon
Can someone please tell me what XR means? It's not defined in the article. I'm
guessing something to do with VR but it's not clear.

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m-p-3
X is simply a wildcard for the V and A in VR and AR.

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thedaemon
Thank you very much. Googling gave me an iPhone XR.

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himanshu810e
This article is written by a fanboy who cannot see where Unity is lagging
behind when it comes to game development in general. If we are talking about
XR then certainly unreal beats the charts but if one has more understanding of
Unity over Unreal then I can totally understand where the bias is coming from

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lol666
bad code/non-performance optimized can be pain in both. a lot of games done in
unity have quite a bit of 'sluggishness', that's opinion from some of my
friends whom are those 8h per day play, 6 hours of sleep gamers. so if youre
after high performance & amazing looks which is even more important in vr AND
u are/have decent devs then ue is a better choice (personal opinion).
comparing the speed c# vs c++... well, there's no no point right? ;)

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RenRav
Seemed like there was more resources and info for Unity a few years ago. This
was an interesting update about Unreal Engine.

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ncmncm
Which of them depend on GC?

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JCoder58
Both. Unity is built on .NET, while Epic has added custom tooling to enable
garbage collection (and reflection) for its C++ Object hierarchy.

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throwawayhhakdl
> Below is an example of a jet engine 3D model that you can find in Unity
> Asset’s store. It could be used in VR training simulation for jet
> maintenance:

Jeez I certainly hope not

I’ve dabbled with both for VR. The primary concern is just getting your
hardware to work with the provided examples. I had a frustrating but
eventually successful time with Unity. I had an unsuccessful time in Unreal.

But in either case VR is just a camera controlled with your head plus some
wands. I don’t think the engine will differentiate much compared to the
mountain of careful design decisions you need to make to accommodate VR tech.

