Unreal Engine 4 Now Available for Microsoft HoloLens 2

A major software tool first promised during the reveal of the HoloLens 2 earlier this year is finally available.

Native support for Unreal Engine 4 has arrived for the HoloLens 2 via early access on GitHub (login required).

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Epic Games founder and CEO Tim Sweeney first announced the coming development on stage at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, but it was at last month's Build conference where the world truly got a good look at some of the possibilities inherent in the pairing.

Later, Microsoft's Jackson Fields and Epic Games' partnership manager Chance Ivey walked developers through some of the basics of building HoloLens 2 apps using Unreal Engine 4.

The package allows for streaming support that wirelessly sends PC-powered rendering to the HoloLens 1 and 2 for display, and then telemetry and odometry sensor data is sent back from the HoloLens to the PC for computation.

The native support aspect is targeted at the HoloLens 2 using Unreal Engine 4's XR framework. After you've created your build on the PC, you can send your build to the HoloLens 2 to run natively on the device, no PC required. This is helpful for those who haven't been able to get access to the HoloLens 2, allowing those developers to begin building apps early in the months leading up to the device's official release.

Also supported are voice input, finger tracking, gesture recognition, spatial anchor pinning, and meshing. A production-ready version of the tool, Unreal Engine 4.23, will be coming out in the next couple of months.

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Cover image via Microsoft