Following on from a big Unreal Engine presentation at GDC 2017, Epic Games have announced the release date for their new VR editor for Unreal 4. It has been created to allow developers to design worlds for VR using a headset and the full creation tool set of Unreal 4.

Epic Games technical director Mike Fricker stated that the new VR editor will allow designers to create worlds with a proper sense of scale, before then being able to place themselves into that newly-created world to check that everything looks correct, effectively putting them in the place of their players. If something’s not right for them, it probably won’t be for the player either.

Like all VR at the moment though, special considerations were given to making sure the user wouldn’t become motion sick too easily if at all. Lauren Ridge, who is a tools programmer at Epic Games said that you “can’t tip yourself over” while in the editor and they’ve restricted the rotation of the actual person in the VR to only one direction to stop you getting dizzy. Ridge has said that no one at Epic ever got ill while using the VR editor, but they have put the safeguards in place just in case others are more prone to motion sickness.

What is interesting is that Epic partnered with Pixar for Unreal Engine 4, making both the standard engine as well as the VR editor compatible with the studio’s Universal Scene Description graphics pipeline. Which means that the VR editor could see use outside of gaming for Pixar’s future film efforts.

The VR editor will launch April 17th.