Unity Engine
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Unity is a cross-platform game engine developed by Unity Technologies, first announced and released in June 2005 at Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a Mac OS X game engine. The engine has since been gradually extended to support a variety of desktop, mobile, console, augmented reality, and virtual reality platforms. It is particularly popular for iOS and Android mobile game development, is considered easy to use for beginner developers, and is popular for indie game development.[6]
The engine can be used to create three-dimensional (3D) and two-dimensional (2D) games, as well as interactive simulations.[7][8] The engine has been adopted by industries outside video gaming, such as film, automotive, architecture, engineering, construction, and the United States Armed Forces.[9]
The Unity game engine launched in 2005, aiming to "democratize" game development by making it accessible to more developers.[7][10] It was shown at Worldwide Developers Conference 2005 by Scott Forstall on Mac OS X.[11] The next year, Unity was named runner-up in the Best Use of Mac OS X Graphics category in Apple Inc.'s Apple Design Awards.[12] Unity was initially released for Mac OS X, later adding support for Microsoft Windows and Web browsers.[13]
Unity 2.0 launched in 2007 with approximately 50 new features. DirectX support was added in 2.0.[14] The release included an optimized terrain engine for detailed 3D environments, real-time dynamic shadows, directional lights and spotlights, video playback, and other features.[14] The release also added a version control system to allow developers to collaborate more easily.[14] It included a Networking Layer for developers to create multiplayer games based on the User Datagram Protocol, offering Network Address Translation, State Synchronization, and Remote Procedure Calls.[14] When Apple launched its App Store in 2008, Unity added support for the iPhone.[13] Unity 2.5, released in March, 2009, added editor support for Windows.[15]
Unity 3.0 launched in September 2010 with features expanding the engine's graphics features for desktop computers and video game consoles.[16] In addition to Android support, Unity 3 featured integration of Illuminate Labs' Beast Lightmap tool, deferred rendering, a built-in tree editor, native font rendering, automatic UV mapping, and audio filters, among other things.[16] In 2012 VentureBeat wrote, "Few companies have contributed as much to the flowing of independently produced games as Unity Technologies. [...] More than 1.3 million developers are using its tools to create gee-whiz graphics in their iOS, Android, console, PC, and web-based games. Unity wants to be the engine for multi-platform games, period."[17] A May 2012 survey by Game Developer magazine indicated Unity as its top game engine for mobile platforms.[18]
Facebook integrated a software development kit for games using the Unity game engine in 2013.[20] This featured tools that allowed tracking advertising campaigns and deep linking, where users were directly linked from social media posts to specific portions within games, and easy in-game-image sharing.[20] In 2016, Facebook developed a new PC gaming platform with Unity.[21] Unity provided support for Facebook's gaming platforms, and Unity developers could more quickly export and publish games to Facebook.[21]
The Verge said of 2015's Unity 5 release: "Unity started with the goal of making game development universally accessible. [...] Unity 5 is a long-awaited step towards that future."[22] With Unity 5, the engine improved its lighting and audio.[23] Through WebGL, Unity developers could add their games to compatible Web browsers with no plug-ins required for players.[23] Unity 5.0 offered real-time global illumination, light mapping previews, Unity Cloud, a new audio system, and the Nvidia PhysX 3.3 physics engine.[23] The fifth generation of the Unity engine also introduced Cinematic Image Effects to help make Unity games look less generic.[24] Unity began offering an experimental and unsupported Linux editor build in August 2015.[25] Unity 5.6 added new lighting and particle effects, updated the engine's overall performance, and added native support for Nintendo Switch, Facebook Gameroom, Google Daydream, and the Vulkan graphics API.[26] It introduced a 4K video player capable of running 360-degree videos for virtual reality.[26]
In December 2016, Unity Technologies announced that they would change the version numbering system for Unity from sequence-based identifiers to year of release to align the versioning with their more frequent release cadence; Unity 5.6 was therefore followed by Unity 2017.[29] Unity 2017 tools featured a real-time graphics rendering engine, color grading and worldbuilding, live operations analytics and performance reporting.[30] Unity 2017.2 underscored Unity Technologies' plans beyond video games.[30] This included new tools such as Timeline, which allowed developers to drag-and-drop animations into games, and Cinemachine, a smart camera system within games.[30] Unity 2017.2 also integrated Autodesk's 3DS Max and Maya tools into the Unity engine for a streamlined asset sharing in-game iteration process.[31]
Unity 2018 featured the Scriptable Render Pipeline for developers to create high-end graphics.[32] This included the High-Definition Rendering Pipeline for console and PC experiences, and the Lightweight Rendering Pipeline (later renamed to the Universal Render Pipeline[33]) for mobile, virtual reality, and augmented reality.[32] Unity 2018 also included machine learning tools, such as Imitation Learning, whereby games learn from real player habits, support for Magic Leap, and templates for new developers.[32]
As of 2020, software built with Unity's game engine was running on more than 1.5 billion devices. According to Unity, apps made with their game engine account for 50 percent of all mobile games, and are downloaded more than 3 billion times per month, and approximately 15,000 new projects are started daily with its software.[35][36] Financial Times reported that Unity's engine "powers some of the world's most lucrative mobile games", such as Pokmon Go and Activision's Call of Duty Mobile.[37]
In June 2020, Unity introduced the Mixed and Augmented Reality Studio (MARS), which provides developers with additional functionality for rules-based generation of augmented reality (AR) applications.[38] Unity released Unity Forma, an automotive and retail solution tool, on December 9, 2020.[39]
Unity 2021 brought multiple new features such as Bolt, Unity's Visual Scripting system, a new multiplayer library to support multiplayer games, improved Il2cpp runtime performance, Volumetric clouds for the High Definition Render pipeline.[42] Shadow caching and Screen Space Global Illumination for HDRP.[43] For the Universal Render Pipeline it added new features such as point light shadows, Deferred renderer and general core engine improvements and fixes.[44][45] Full Apple Silicon support was also added in Unity 2021.2. Unity Hub support for Apple Silicon editors arrived in version 3.0 in January 2022.[46]
Changes to Unity 2022 were intended to improve productivity by reducing the time required to enter play mode and import files, and implementing visual search queries and multi selection in the package manager.[47] For 2D projects, changes focused on accelerating core software, import, animation, and physics. Sprite atlasing was revised. Support for PSD extension files and layer management were added to the 2D PSD Importer, and Delaunay tessellation for 2D physics was added.[47]
On November 16, 2023, Unity announced that the next version of the engine would be called Unity 6, reverting to the previous version numbering convention. Unity 6 is planned for release in 2024, with planned features including new generative AI tools called Unity Muse and Unity Sentis.[48] Unity 6 also makes use of the revised licensing agreement, including the "runtime fee".[49]
Unity gives users the ability to create games and experiences in both 2D and 3D, and the engine offers a primary scripting API in C# using Mono, for both the Unity editor in the form of plugins, and games themselves, as well as drag and drop functionality.[50] Prior to C# being the primary programming language used for the engine, it previously supported Boo, which was removed with the release of Unity 5,[51] and a Boo-based implementation of JavaScript called UnityScript, which was deprecated in August 2017, after the release of Unity 2017.1, in favor of C#.[52][53]
Within 2D games, Unity allows importation of sprites and an advanced 2D world renderer. For 3D games, Unity allows specification of texture compression, mipmaps, and resolution settings for each platform that the game engine supports,[54] and provides support for bump mapping, reflection mapping, parallax mapping, screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO), dynamic shadows using shadow maps, render-to-texture and full-screen post-processing effects.[55]
Two separate render pipelines are available, High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) and Universal Render Pipeline (URP, previously LWRP), in addition to the legacy built-in pipeline.[56][57] All three render pipelines are incompatible with each other.[58] Unity offers a tool to upgrade shaders using the legacy renderer to URP or HDRP.
Creators can develop and sell user-generated assets to other game makers via the Unity Asset Store. This includes 3D and 2D assets and environments for developers to buy and sell.[59] Unity Asset Store launched in 2010. By 2018, there had been approximately 40 million downloads through the digital store.[60]
Unity is a cross-platform engine.[61] The Unity editor is supported on Windows, macOS, and the Linux platform, while the engine itself currently supports building games for more than 19 different platforms, including mobile, desktop, consoles, and virtual reality.[62][63] Unity 2020 LTS officially supports the following platforms:[64]
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