Engines organized by goal, background or need.

If you are more of an artists Unreal. If you are looking to use lots of free assets Unreal. If your goal is to learn coding more than anything then Unity for sure. Unreal engine is a great engine for programming but Unity gives you access to far more programming resources, better documentation, a bigger community of developers and a series of tools that work the same that other programming toolchains work(the entire .NET ecosystem). If you have some knowledge with a Managed Programming language like (Java, Javascript, or C#) then Unity. If you are planning on getting on Web Development then Unity. If you are interested in AR then Unity, tons more resources available in Unity. If you want great looking graphics quick then Unreal. If you have experience with C++ then Unreal.

Feature Comparison Table Unreal vs Unity

Feature Unity Unreal
Source Code Availability Only Paying customers Available
High Quality Graphics Setup Effort Medium Effort Minimal Effort
Fast Code Prototyping Very Fast Slow
Programming Options C# and Machine Generated C++ ill2cpp C++ and Blueprint Visual Scripting
Platform Support Supports Most Platforms Supports Most Platforms
Documentation Largely Available. Large collection of Questions and answers available online. Average Documentation. Often Lacking
Performance Top performance only second to native code Top performance only second to native code. Good Mobile performance requires lots of setup
Web Application Lots of Support with integration with Native UI 3rd Party Beta Support and no default Native UI integration
Server Application Streaming Support 3rd Party Native in Engine Pixel Streaming
Fast Code Prototyping Very Fast Slow
Virtual Production Very Early Support. More support available through third parties like Mechdyne Full Support and used by Film Industry like Star Wars Mandalorian and Netflix’s 1899

Business Decision-Making when Picking VR Engines

You are trying to make a VR application to eventually profit from it correct? When you develop an application as a business you have to make these decisions with a business approach. What is your goal with this application? Is it to generate profit short term say after a year or 2 of development? Or is it to get familiar with developing VR applications to later build an app you can sell, for example, 2 years after this first application? What benefits do you get from Unity today? You have a familiar engine where you have an app already developed that you can push out to users and gather feedback. With the feedback gathered do you see a possibility that you could sell this at any time? Do the new Unity changes affect the profits you would make? If they do how much do you estimate it will affect it? Does switching to unreal bring you value that could reduce the time it will take to make revenue from this VR app, or does it increase the potential revenue you forecast in any way? The reality is that the majority of studios switch to other engines because they have a source of income reliable enough to sustain their switch to another engine. Take for example among us developers. They don’t have any benefit from sticking to unity. For the Among Us developers even if there is a learning curve in switching to unreal, their profits will be hit hard enough that the savings obtained from switching will pay for the time invested in switching. Think about these things and what your answers are. This will help you make the best decision.

Outside of the business approach, there is the developer approach. This one is difficult to measure given that the future of any development industry is hard to predict. The following question comes to mind. As a developer will switching to unreal and learning unreal increase your ability or speed to produce the content you want to develop? Will the tools and solutions Unreal provides in the future be more valuable to achieving your goals as a developer? Will the learning resources be more valuable? Will the developer community formed around it be more valuable? Undoubtedly the success of applications and tools made in unreal plays a major role. In VR the most popular games are Unity based. However, there are successful Unreal games as well. See the advantages and disadvantages given the engine features used in games made in either one.

Top Games from SteamVR and Meta Quest Store on 09/23/2023

Unity: Vrchat, Gorilla Tag, Beat Saber, Hellsweeper, Bonelab, Blade And Sorcery, Boneworks, Among Us Vr, Superhot, Job Simulator, Thrill Of The Fight, I Expect You To Die

Unreal: Pavlov, Creed Rise To Glory, Contractors, Walking Dead Saints And Sinners, Ghost Of Tabor

Something very important to VR development is the amount of developer resources available in an Engine. The resources available in Unity to develop in VR are far larger than what is available in Unreal. It is also significantly easier to get started developing in VR in Unity than in Unreal. I think Unreal in the long term will offer more and better resources for VR development for free than Unity will have available but today that is not the case and there is nothing announced coming soon.

I think Unity made a horrible decision but if you pay (buying assets, royalty, license etc.) for these tools so that you can use them to sell a product you have to think of them for their business value first. The only exception would be if whatever decision they made affects your core principles as a developer. In which case this wouldn’t be a question at all the answer would be clear. Unity has proven to lack transparency, be greedy and untrustworthy for a significant portion of their customer base but the vast majority of developers were using this as a tool not because of Unity as a company but because it was the best tool for the job they needed to do.

I hope these ideas help out. On 09/23/2023 Unity backtracked a lot of its original plan changes and is now proposing a slightly better plan than the previous one. However, there haven’t been any changes to the company leadership or any changes in the company. This means there is a big chance that you will see these changes in a few years or maybe sooner.