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This could be the future of all software development

Making games for virtual reality is pretty much the same as making games for anything else: game developers sit at computers and write code, occasionally testing it within a VR headset.

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No more!

What you see above is a game developer wearing a VR headset (the HTC Vive), using motion controllers to work on a game-in-progress in real time. 

Rather than working on a game in a vacuum, he's working on it directly — with his hands — from within the game! This is a much bigger deal than it might seem like — it enables not just game developers, but anyone, to jump right into a project personally. It also enables far easier game development. 

Unreal Engine 4 VR
Epic Games

Want to re-size that object? Simply pinch and zoom, like you would on an iPhone.

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The tool, which comes from Epic Games, is a pretty remarkable feat considering the alternative — a Photoshop-esque puzzle of tools and actions, known as Unreal Engine 4. This takes something like Photoshop and gives users the freedom and accessibility of something more like Microsoft Paint. Sure, you can get into all the nitty gritty and adjust details, but it's perfectly serviceable for the average, non-game developer person.

"There are 50 million users of 'Minecraft' who are already familiar with building," Epic Games president Tim Sweeney, a longtime game developer, programmer, and company president told Tech Insider. Sweeney founded Epic around 1991; he's been doing the software development thing for a long time now.

And that's important, because Sweeney sees this — software development within VR — as the future of all software development: being able to actually see what you're creating in real time. 

Unreal Engine 4 in VR
Epic Games

Developers can start using the tool soon, as Epic's planning to show it off at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this March. 

Video Games Virtual reality
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