Augmented reality is becoming more popular mostly because of the still growing amount of interesting mobile games such as Pokemon Go or Wizards Unite. So far the real world locations were mostly transformed into the games as a background to pregenerated animations, but the weather network have done something special to their forecast – used the real-time rendering as part of their hurricane announcement in Florence. The result is really impressive and I’m looking forward to see more of this type of technology used in more common situations.

Creating as dramatic scene for such an important announcement can be a challenge to the artist, but at the same time shows the possibilities the real-time rendering gives to the developers.

The Unreal Studio presents the real-time rendering for free for the certain amount of time. So hurry up if you want to try it out.

So far this type of graphic is mostly used for VFX in other media rather than games (because of limitations), but I hope that maybe with the come of the next-gen technology, we will be able to produce such a beautiful environments using this technique.

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Sparckman, 16 Sep 2018, [online video] ‘The weather network CAUGHT using UNREAL ENGINE 4 for their effects LOL’, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMmLTH5E2vA [Accessed: 13 June 2019]

Art by Rens, 6 Feb 2018, [online video] ‘Exploring the limits of real time rendering’, Availiable at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlyzo9ll9Vw [Accessed: 13 June 2019]