Epic’s Unreal Engine virtual reality demo hits Oculus Rift, PS4’s Morpheus, and Vive

Virtual reality is one of the oncoming technical innovations that has the gaming community excited about the future, and game developer and tool creator Epic Games wants to play a big role in that future.

Epic Games released its Showdown VR tech demonstration for free online today for the Oculus Rift development kit, Sony’s PlayStation Morpheus, and the HTC’s and Valve’s Vive. Showdown is a non-interactive cinematic video experience featuring a futuristic gunfight between police officers and a robotic walking tank. This is the same demo that Epic has showed off repeatedly at trade shows like the Game Developer Conference. Analysts are predicting the virtual- and augmented-reality market could grow into a $150-billion business by 2020, and Epic’s Unreal could capture a piece of that by getting studios excited for its technology.

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Check Epic’s Unreal blog for more information about how to download the Showdown demo — or you can watch a direct-feed, non-VR video below:

If you’re wondering why Epic is releasing a VR demonstration for a development kit and two unreleased head-mounted displays, the answer is that this isn’t for you. The Vive is still two or three months off (maybe even more than that) and the Morpheus isn’t coming until sometime in the first half of next year. But Epic is releasing Showdown specifically for developers who may already have the tool kits for those devices.

Epic wants VR developers to see what Unreal Engine is capable of. The company wants this demo to convince those studios to choose Unreal when they go to make their first commercial VR releases. And Unreal will need that help as it faces stiff competition from alternative engines like Unity.