Mozilla and Epic Games port Unreal Engine 3 to the browser, no plugins necessary

In an effort to showcase the potential of browser-based gaming, Mozilla has teamed with Epic Games to bring the developer’s Unreal Engine 3 to browsers — with no need for any plugins. To accomplish such a feat, Mozilla put together a “highly-optimized” version of JavaScript. Porting Epic’s hugely popular engine to the browser took only four days, according to the below video. That doesn’t make the result any less impressive, however: Unreal Engine 3 appears to run smoothly with nary a hiccup or stutter in sight. “With this port, developers will soon be able to explore limitless possibilities when it comes to porting their popular gaming titles to the web,” reads a blog post at Mozilla. Both companies say performance resembles that of a native game.

The Unreal Engine 3 demo will be made available within a few weeks time, and Mozilla is also planning to apply a similar formula to mobile. “We are working with premium game publishers such as Disney, EA and ZeptoLab who are using the same technology to bring performance optimizations to their top-rated games,” the company says.