The latest run of next generation games engines has shown promising, bordering extraordinary results, with Unreal Engine 4.1 and CryEngine’s latest iteration showing off some of the most impressive nigh on photorealistic graphics ever demoed to gamers.
With that in mind, Steam has begun the engineering and software development necessary to power these chunky games engines, with the development of dedicated ‘Steam Machines’ (which we reported on previously) being carried out by third parties, and a revolutionary Steam only operating system SteamOS.
SteamOS is a continuation and expansion of the dashboard feature recently released by Steam, ‘Big Picture’ which generates a console-style front end dashboard which displays games and community functions in the same way as you might find on an Xbox or a Playstation. SteamOS aims to bring this functionality to a standalone device in the form of Steam Boxes, meaning that these specialised computers will boot up straight to the Big Picture dashboard. This will mean you can play your Steam games effectively the same way as you would on a console.
Back to the game engines, both Unreal Engine 4.1 and CryEngine have been modified to allow them to run on Linux, and by extension on the linux-based SteamOS. This means that the latest and greatest titles will be available on the new Steam Boxes and the SteamOS. Check out the demos for these new engines here.
Unreal Engine Demoing Elemental: