Over the next few years, virtual reality is going to try to prove that it is a viable platform for gaming and industry, and publisher Epic Games is doing its part to ensure that the immersive new medium catches on.
Epic, which is best known for producing shooters like Unreal Tournament and Gears of Wars, released the first entry in a new YouTube documentary series about VR. Called Sense of Presence, these minifilms will attempt to explain that magic of VR, which is an experience that is hard to translate into speech or text. But these kinds of videos may do a fine job getting people interested in the technology while it’s still impossible to put everyone into head-mounted display unit like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. Analysts predict that the virtual- and augmented-reality markets will grow to $150 billion by 2020, but that’s not going to happen magically — it’s going to happen with companies like Epic taking the lead.
You can watch the first episode of Sense of Presence for yourself below:
The short documentary features interviews with a number of key people in the VR scene. That includes Oculus cofounder Palmer Luckey, who many credit with kickstarting this latest revival of head-mounted displays. The video also includes soundbites from Epic chief technology officer Kim Libreri, 3D Live chief executive officer Nathan Huber, and Magnopus cofounder Alex Hennig.
Of course, Epic isn’t simply a publisher and developer — the company is also responsible for the Unreal Engine game-making tool kit that it licenses to other developers. It’s obvious that the company is trying to position that software as the premiere software for building VR experiences.
This video series comes soon after Epic made its VR Showdown demonstration available to the public. This experience shows a hyperdetailed futuristic gunfight between a mech and a police force, and while you can watch the demo in a video below — you can feel like you’re walking through it if you boot it up in an Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, or PlayStation VR.
And that last point is probably the most important for Epic. The company has always ensured that developers could quickly develop one game for multiple platforms. Unreal Engine games were incredibly common across the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC during the last generation of consoles. Now, with the many forms of VR upon us (Vive this holiday, Oculus Rift in early 2016, and PlayStation VR in the first half of 2016), Epic wants studios to know that they support all three.