ABSTRACT
Game engines play an important role in the VR industry, not only for games, architecture, or education purposes, but also for narrative virtual reality (VR). A game engine is software that displays a 3D environment in which 3D assets and effects can be placed and animated. Functionalities typically provided by a game engine include a rendering engine for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection, sound, scripting, animation, and may include video support for cinematics. A lot of different game engines exist and many of them are becoming compatible with VR. Live-action VR limits the agency of the participants, who can only choose where to look in the 360° sphere. Game engine-based VR opens up a lot more possibilities ranging from branching storytelling to "room-scale" games. Game engine-based VR experiences are usually packaged into an.exe file, a program containing both the experience itself and the "player" to explore it.
