Prerequisites¶

Compatibility¶

	Supported
Operating system	Linux (Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04), macOS 15.0 or newer (Apple silicon only), Windows 10 and 11
Unreal Engine	5.7 and 5.8

Install the prerequisites¶

LinuxmacOSWindows

Unreal: download and install from https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/linux
curl: sudo apt update && sudo apt install curl
jq: sudo apt update && sudo apt install jq

Unreal: install using the Epic Games Launcher
jq: brew install jq

Unreal: install using the Epic Games Launcher
jq: download https://github.com/jqlang/jq/releases/latest/download/jq-win64.exe, put it anywhere on your PATH, and make sure it is named jq

Every Tempo script ships as both a *.sh and a *.bat. The *.bat versions run on Windows as-is, so nothing extra is required. If you would rather run the *.sh versions, do so from Git Bash.

Environment variables¶

UNREAL_ENGINE_PATH: Required on Linux. Points at your Unreal Engine installation directory — the folder containing Engine. On macOS and Windows Tempo finds Unreal automatically via your .uproject file, but setting this overrides that.

Several other environment variables opt into optional build behavior (Rust and C++ client generation, skipping code generation). They are collected in the environment variable reference.

What you do not need¶

A custom Unreal build. Tempo patches your existing engine installation in place via engine mods.
ROS. Tempo's primary interface is gRPC. ROS 2 support exists and is entirely optional — see TempoROS.
To set up a Python environment by hand. The build generates the tempo_sim package and a ready-to-use virtual environment at <project_root>/TempoEnv.

Client-only machines¶

The prerequisites above are for building and running the simulator. A machine that only talks to a Tempo server needs none of them — no Unreal, no build, not even a checkout. Install the published client and point it at the sim:

pip install tempo-sim

[dependencies]
tempo-sim = "0.1"

The published packages cover Tempo's built-in services. If your project defines its own RPCs, your users need the package your build generates instead.

Client APIs