Unreal Engine allows the widespread deployment of applications catering to a tightly bound framework - a system, upon which standard operations can be completed. It functions standardly, independently of any OS upon which it is hosted. There is no distinction between an OS hosted on another OS, nor is there a requirement that for an OS to be considered an operating system, no other operating system can be involved.
Windows is a game engine because you can write standard games for it, standardly, and its base SDK’s support game development, natively - it also of course supports other game engines, which eventually become capable of hosting applications (and are thus OS’s), because: Windows is an OS and it is a game engine…
>Unreal Engine allows the widespread deployment of applications catering to a tightly bound framework - a system, upon which standard operations can be completed.
This isn't the definition of an OS, it's the definition of literally all software - a "system" upon which "operations" are performed.
But the purpose of Unreal Engine isn't to manage a computer's hardware and software resources, user access, etc. It isn't an operating system. It doesn't operate the system. An operating system hosted by an OS still serves the purpose of an operating system. The actual purpose of the software matters.
>Windows is a game engine because you can write standard games for it, standardly, and its base SDK’s support game development, natively - it also of course supports other game engines, which eventually become capable of hosting applications (and are thus OS’s), because: Windows is an OS and it is a game engine…
Windows is not a game engine because its purpose is not creating games. The fact that it can run applications, some of which may happen to be game engines, does not make it a game engine. The fact that it has graphics and sound APIs that game engines can access doesn't make it a game engine.
Sorry, I don't find this profound or interesting. Windows has not become a game engine, and Unreal has not become an operating system. Your argument basically boils down to semantics and only makes sense if you ignore the actual context and purpose of what we're talking about and why the distinctions matter.
>a "system" upon which "operations" are performed.
Indeed, that is the point entirely. The distinction is arbitrary.
> But the purpose of Unreal Engine isn't to manage a computer's hardware and software resources, user access, etc.
Oh no, that is absolutely the purpose of Unreal Engine - to manager the computers available hardware, software resources, user permissions in such a way that - across a very wide variety of different hardware configurations - the hosted applications run standardly and consistently.
That it fulfills this purpose as a system of operating hardware resources in order to provide standard game applications their own hosting surface, across a wider variety of host OS’s, demonstrates that in fact, an OS does not become an OS just because it is the first thing to boot the hardware.
By that reasoning, the BIOS is an operating system and Windows is just an application which runs on it, with a very large percentage of users doing so only to play games …
> Windows is not a game engine because its purpose is not creating games.
I think there is a billion dollar department at Microsoft with is at odds with your view entirely. Microsoft has spent a lot of resources making Windows into a game engine which can fulfill the purpose.
> Sorry, I don't find this profound or interesting
Give it time. You will see the fallacy in your arbitrary definitions.
> Semantics
Actually, I’m arguing from a great deal of experience as a systems analyst.
