We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Unreal Engine 4.21 is out, now defaults to the Vulkan API on Linux

By - | Views: 29,977

Epic Games have released Unreal Engine 4.21 and it includes some interesting stuff on the Linux side of things.

From now, Unreal Engine will default to using the Vulkan API on Linux and fallback to OpenGL when that can't be used. This is going to be good for the future of Linux games, since it should help developers get better performance.

On top of that, it features a new media player for Linux with the bundled WebMMedia plugin which includes support for WebM VPX8/9 videos. To further improve Linux support, they now have a proper crash reporter interface so that they can "continue to improve support for Linux platforms".

That's just the improvements for Linux, there's absolutely tons more included in this release including Android and iOS optimizations as a result of Epic's work on Fornite.

It's also really nice to see Epic thank contributors, noting 121 improvements where submitted by the community to their GitHub. Although you can only access it with an Unreal Engine account.

More info on the official announcement.

Who knows, maybe now that Vulkan is in better shape in Unreal Engine, Epic Games might eventually bring Fortnite to Linux. I can dream right?

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
31 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
32 comments
Page: «4/4
  Go to:

Power-Metal-Games Nov 10, 2018
Quoting: PsychojauAbout the Governor, if you don"t have a very recent kernel (and even then) you can have some trouble. Not very important, but I had some laggs (I had an I7) opening projects or test while having many blueprints + animation tabs open. If I put the governor on "performances" : no more.
Now, I'm using a recent AMD and Linux 4.19. I still put this in "performances" mode but honestly, I didn't notice anything.

It wasn't happening on 4.20. Everything worked fine. At last, almost everything. Recently I found things that don't work at all - I wanted to make game menus to work with game controller, but no. It doesn't read values of axes when in menu designer (I forgot how it's called, UMG editor?). I was hopping that it's maybe fixed in 4.21, but 4.21 is working like I described. First I thought that you ware already using 4.21 and that my case was an exception. I never had to "overclock" my CPU to be able to use UE4. I have an i7 and it was always more than enough to run UE.

I wanted to test a test project before trying to open my main project in the newer version, so I just made a simple first person project.

Edit: I'm currently on Ubuntu 18.10. And with 396.54 driver.


Last edited by Power-Metal-Games on 10 November 2018 at 3:15 pm UTC
Jau Dec 17, 2018
Some news !
4.20.1 works great but you need to open it with -opengl .
When you want to test your project at full performances, just open it as "standalone game".
Gamepads work perfectly too.
One more thing : Epic told me NOT to use 415 ! This beta driver is unstable and not supported by Unreal Engine. I ran some tests and yes, I can confirm a lot of trouble with many Vulkan products.
0 problems with my project ! PS4 gamepad is super reponsive and FPS locked at 60 with all my post-processes and emitters ! I'm relieved :P


Last edited by Jau on 17 December 2018 at 1:59 pm UTC
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.