Milestone recently announced the latest MXGP game for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC, now we take the opportunity to catch up on the latest racing title to make use of the impressive Unreal 4 engine...
With something of a buzz around the Unreal 4 game engine recently following the announcement of the new
GTR3 race sim and
future migration of RaceRoom Racing Experience to the powerful game engine, I thought it would be interesting to throw some focus towards MXGP 3 - the latest racing game due to release using the power of Unreal 4.
First to help catch up those of you perhaps less knowledgeable on the latest gaming technology let's explain a little bit about what Unreal 4 Engine actually is. According to Unreal themselves, UE4 is
"a complete suite of game development tools made by game developers, for game developers. From 2D mobile games to console blockbusters, Unreal Engine 4 gives you everything you need to start, ship, grow and stand out from the crowd".
Sounds pretty hot eh? Well there's more...
"Unreal Engine technology powers hundreds of games as well as real-time 3D films, training simulations, visualizations and more. Over the past 15 years, thousands of individuals and teams and have built careers and companies around skills developed using the engine.
- DirectX 11 & 12 Rendering Features - Unreal Engine 4 supports advanced DirectX 11 & 12 rendering features such as full-scene HDR reflections, thousands of dynamic lights per scene, artist-programmable tessellation and displacement, physically-based shading and materials, IES lighting profiles and much more.
- Cascade Visual Effects - The Cascade VFX editor provides the tools needed to create detailed fire, smoke, snow, dust, dirt, rubble and more. Cascade's pipelined includes fast, low-cost GPU particle simulation and a collision system that interacts with the depth buffer. Millions of dynamic particles can receive and emit light within a scene, and you can control all kinds of particle properties, including size, color, density, falloff and bounciness.
- New Material Pipeline - Unreal Engine 4's new material pipeline makes use of physically-based shading to give you unprecedented control over the look and feel of characters and objects. Quickly create a wide range of surfaces that hold up visually under close examination. Layer materials and fine-tune values at the pixel level to achieve any kind of style you desire.
- Blueprint Visual Scripting - Bring your creative visions to life in-game with Blueprint visual scripting. Blueprints enable anyone to rapidly prototype and build playable content without touching a line of code. Use Blueprints to author level, object and gameplay behaviors, modify user interface, adjust input controls and so much more.
- Live Blueprint Debugging - Blueprint visual scripting comes with a built-in debugger you can use to interactively visualize gameplay flow and inspect property values while testing your game. Freeze the game at any time and audit its state by setting breakpoints on individual nodes in your Blueprint graphs. Step through actions and events, make changes as you like, and have fun optimizing your game on the fly.
- Content Browser - Use Unreal Engine 4's Content Browser to import, organize, search, tag, filter and modify terabytes of game assets within the Unreal Editor. Real-time animated thumbnail previews can easily be changed and saved with the handy screenshot function. Create any type of asset collection to be used for individual work or shared with other developers.
- Persona Animation - Use the Persona animation toolset to edit skeletons, skeletal meshes and sockets, animation Blueprints and more. This multi-purpose tool enables you to preview animation sequences and morph targets, and also set up animation blend spaces and montages. You can also modify physics and collision properties for skeletal mesh actors using the Physics Asset editing tool (PhAT).
- Matinee Cinematics - Unreal Engine 4's Matinee cinematic toolset provides director-level control over cut scenes, dynamic gameplay sequences and movies. With a look and feel similar to non-linear editors used for video editing, Matinee enables you to set up action within your scenes down to the finest detail, animate scene properties over time, and produce awesome filmic moments.
- Terrain & Foliage - Create large, open world environments with the Landscape system, which paves the way for terrains that are orders of magnitude larger than what have been previously possible thanks to its powerful LOD system and efficient memory use. Customize huge, outdoor worlds using the foliage tool by quickly painting or erasing all sorts of terrain components.
- Post-Process Effects - Unreal Engine 4's post-processing features enable you to gracefully adjust the look and feel of scenes. Filmic effects at your fingertips include ambient cubemaps, ambient occlusion, bloom, color grading, depth of field, eye adaptation, lens flares, light shafts, temporal anti-aliasing and tone mapping, just to name a few.
- Full Source Code Access - With C++ source code for all of Unreal Engine 4, you can customize and extend Unreal Editor tools and Unreal Engine subsystems, including physics, audio, online, animation, rendering as well as Slate UI. With complete control over engine and gameplay code, you get everything so you can build anything.
- Professional Source Control - Unreal Engine 4 supports full C++ source code access via GitHub for subscription members with clear version documentation and tracking. In addition, both Perforce version control and Apache Subversion support are available to developers with custom license terms. No matter your team size, you can easily coordinate development and design efforts with others through UE4's versioning infrastructure.
- C++ Code View - Unreal Engine 4 Code View saves time by allowing you to browse C++ functions directly on game characters and objects and jump straight to source code lines in Microsoft Visual Studio to make changes.
- Hot Reload Function - Make updates to your gameplay code while the game is running using Unreal Engine 4's popular Hot Reload feature. This tool allows you to edit C++ code and see those changes reflected immediately in-game without ever pausing gameplay.
- Simulate & Immersive Views - Quickly debug and update gameplay behaviors as they happen through Simulate Mode, which lets you run game logic in the editor viewport and inspect AI as characters perform actions. View your game in full screen within the editing environment with Immersive View, which allows you to complete iterations on gameplay changes without added UI clutter or distractions.
- Instant Game Preview - Update your game and use Instant Game Preview to instantly spawn a player and play anywhere in-game without waiting for files to save.
- Possess & Eject Features - The Possess and Eject features allow you to play your game in-editor to easily “eject” from the player’s perspective at any time and take control of the camera to inspect anything that may not be behaving properly.
- Artificial Intelligence - Give AI-controlled characters increased spatial awareness of the world around them and enable them to make smarter movements with Unreal Engine 4’s gameplay framework and artificial intelligence system. Dynamic navigation mesh updates in real time as you move objects for optimal pathing at all times.
- Audio - Use Unreal Engine 4's Sound Cue Editor to build the audio pipeline and define audio playback for your game.
- Leading Middleware Integrations - Revolutionary new workflow features and a deep toolset empower developers to quickly iterate on ideas and see immediate results, while complete C++ source code access brings the experience to a whole new level.
So put simply, it's a kick ass graphics engine that any developer can use and take whatever elements they want from it, and add in stuff that doesn't come as standard release. It's pretty much the holy grail for a developer not wanting or able to go the very expensive and often challenging route of designing their own graphics engine from the ground up. It's proven, it's impressive and it's immensely adjustable to suit just about any needs from first person shooter to full on racing simulation.
Enter Milestone Studios and the latest release of the official MXGP World Championship video game. Now using Unreal 4, MXGP 3 is looking set to be the biggest and best yet release of an MXGP licenced product from the Italian development studio responsible for games such as the early WRC titles and MotoGP games.
Already it looks simply stunning visually, and with some interesting features such as deformable track, dynamic weather conditions, two classes of racing bikes and all 18 official race locations, this game is already looking likely to be a massive hit amongst fans of the action packed MXGP racing series.
As the gradual build up to release intensifies, Milestone have launched a couple of new trailers showing the game in action under a variety of different conditions and using different classes of bikes and tracks. You can catch yourself up on the latest trailer releases below:
MXGP 3 - Weather Conditions Trailer (new)
MXGP 3 - Two Stroke Trailer
MXGP 3 - Announcement Trailer
This new title looks likely to be a surprise hit of 2017 and it will be interesting to see if the brand appeals to fans maybe less well versed in the world of MXGP racing once it hits public release on May 30th. One thing is for sure, MXGP 3 looks like it could well signal a major return to form for Milestone on the loose surface bike racing front.
MXGP3 will be released on May 30th for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC.
Check out the
Racing Games forum for discussion across a number of the latest and greatest racing games available today. Drop in and ask a question, catch up on the news or just hang loose and chat with your fellow racing game fans. The community is one of the things that make sim racing such a great hobby, get yourself more involved today and see what you've been missing!
Looking forward to MXGP 3? Do you want to hear more news about this game in future? Have you tried previous entries into the franchise, and if so what is your opinion on the MXGP game series? Let us know in the comments section below!
