Unigine


Unigine is a proprietary cross-platform game engine developed by Russian software company Unigine Corp. Apart from its use as a game engine, it is mainly used in the enterprise area: simulators, virtual reality systems, serious games and visualization. A distinguishing feature of Unigine is support for large open worlds, up to the planet scale. It also has an advanced 3D renderer that currently supports OpenGL 4 and DirectX 11. An updated Unigine SDK is released every three months.
Unigine Engine is a core technology for a lineup of benchmarks, which are used by overclockers and technical media: Tom's Hardware, Linus Tech Tips, PC Gamer and others. Unigine benchmarks are also included as part of the Phoronix Test Suite for benchmarking purposes on Linux and other systems.

UNIGINE 1

The first public release was 0.3 version on May 4, 2005. UNIGINE Engine was created from scratch and is not based on any other engine. The last update has been released on July 7, 2014.

Platforms

Initially started with only Microsoft Windows and Linux support, more platforms were added later: OS X, PlayStation 3, Android, iOS. Experimental support for WebGL was not included into the official SDK. UNIGINE 1 had support for several graphical APIs: DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11, OpenGL, OpenGL ES, PlayStation 3. Initial versions had only OpenGL support.
There are 3 APIs for developers: C++, C#, UnigineScript. Custom shaders can be written in GLSL and HLSL languages.

Serious game features

UNIGINE 1 has several features required by professional simulators and enterprise VR systems, often called serious games.
Support for large virtual worlds was implemented via double precision of coordinates, zone-based background data streaming, and optional operations in geographic coordinate system.
Video output to sophisticated displays was implemented via so-called multi-channel rendering, which is a standard approach in professional simulators. The same system enabled support of multiple output devices with asymmetric projections. Curved screens with multiple projectors were also supported. Also, various types of stereoscopic 3D output were supported: anaglyph, separate images output, Nvidia 3D Vision, as well as VR HMD support. Unigine 1 also supported multi-monitor output.

Other features

Unigine renderer supports shader model 5.0 with hardware tessellation and DirectCompute, together with a set of post-processes, including screen space ambient occlusion, and real-time global illumination. There is a set of built-in high-level objects like terrain, grass, water, clouds and so on. Unigine uses a proprietary physics engine. Pathfinding is also implemented with a proprietary engine, together with basic AI components. Other features includes interactive 3D GUI, video playback using Theora codec, 3D audio system based on OpenAL library, WYSIWYG scene editor.

UNIGINE 2

Originally released on October 10, 2015.
Unigine 2 has all features from Unigine 1, with further focus on simulators and enterprise use. The main differences are the transition from forward rendering to deferred rendering approach, PBR shading, and introduction of several new graphical technologies like geometry water, multi-layered volumetric clouds, SSRTGI, and voxel-based lighting, and introduction of C# API.

Platforms

Supported platforms: Microsoft Windows, Linux, OS X. UNIGINE 2 supports the following graphical APIs: DirectX 11, OpenGL 4.x.
There are 3 APIs for developers: C++, C#, UnigineScript. Supported shader languages: HLSL, GLSL, UUSL.

SSRTGI

Proprietary SSRTGI rendering technology was introduced in 2.5 version. It was presented at SIGGRAPH 2017 Real-Time Live! event.

Development

The roots of Unigine are in the frustum.org open source project, which was initiated in 2002 by Alexander "Frustum" Zaprjagaev, who is a co-founder and ex-CTO of Unigine Corp.

Linux game competition

On November 25, 2010, Unigine Corp announced a competition to support Linux game development. They agreed to give away a free license of the Unigine engine to anyone willing to develop and release a game with a Linux native client, and would also grant the team a Windows license. The competition ran until December 10, 2010, with a considerable number of entries being submitted. Due to the unexpected response, Unigine decided to extend the offer to the three best applicants, with each getting full Unigine licenses. The winners were announced on December 13, 2010, with the developers selected being Kot-in-Action Creative Artel, Gamepulp, and MED-ART.

Unigine-based projects

As of 2019 company claimed to have more than 200 B2B customers worldwide. They primarily use Unigine for military and Virtual Reality projects. Several notable projects include graphical benchmarks and CAD systems.

Games

;Released
;Upcoming
UNIGINE Engine is used as a platform for a series of benchmarks, which can be used to determine the stability of PC hardware under extremely stressful conditions, as well as for overclocking: