Crytek Announces CryEngine V With Focus on VR Support

<p>Frank Vitz of Crytek&comma; took to the stage today at the CryEngine Media Briefing to lay out their plans for the future of the game engine&period; The biggest announcement of the briefing was CryEngine V&comma; which will be the company&&num;8217&semi;s way of moving into the virtual reality market and supporting those developers who wish to stick with their engine&period; On top of this&comma; CryEngine V will support a &&num;8216&semi;PWYW&&num;8217&semi; model &lpar;Pay-what-you-want&rpar; ensuring that indies can use their engine even if they can&&num;8217&semi;t afford to do so&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>This is fairly big news for Crytek&comma; and the PWYW model is a smart move that puts CryEngine V in the hands of developers that otherwise would not be able to afford it&period; This could also mean more virtual reality games from indie developers&period; The &dollar;1 million indie game development fund also helps nudge indie developers forward&period; Crytek also announced that CryEngine will have its own virtual asset store called The Marketplace&comma; which will be similar to Unity&&num;8217&semi;s Asset Store&period; Containing both visual and aural assets&comma; it will be available for developers to sell and purchase assets to use for the engine&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Crytek truly is doubling down on virtual reality&comma; as CryEngine V will support virtually every VR platform from PlayStation VR to Oculus Rift to the HTC Vive&period; It will be Direct X 12 compatible and have many features that are focused on VR&period; To show CryEngine V off&comma; Crytek demonstrated it in action with a new experience called <em>Project Sky Harbor<&sol;em>&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>I for one am excited to see what comes out of developers using CryEngine V for their next project&period; I&&num;8217&semi;m also just curious to see how the PWYW model works when other engines offer their services completely free&period; To celebrate the new engine though&comma; <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;humblebundle&period;com&sol;cryengine-bundle">Humble Bundle is helping get things started with an asset bundle for CryEngine users<&sol;a>&period; So if you&&num;8217&semi;re interested&comma; now might be the time&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><strong>Sources&colon; <a href&equals;"https&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;vrfocus&period;com&sol;2016&sol;03&sol;gdc-2016-liveblogs-cryengine-media-briefing&sol;">VRFocus Live Blog<&sol;a>&comma; <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;venturebeat&period;com&sol;2016&sol;03&sol;15&sol;crytek-switches-cryengine-to-pay-what-you-want-model-and-sets-up-1m-indie-fund&sol;">Venture Beat<&sol;a><&sol;strong><&sol;p>&NewLine;