Flax Engine just released Flax 1.12. This powerful game engine gained several new features in the 1.12 release including DDGI, jiggle physics, web support via WebGPU and more. Major features of Flax Engine 1.12 include:
Here is a summary of the Flax 1.12 release features:
- Web/WebGPU Support: Flax 1.12 introduces experimental support for building games that run directly in browsers using WebGPU for high-performance graphics. This allows developers to export and host their games online, though some features like C# support are not yet implemented.
- DDGI is Production Ready: Dynamic Diffuse Global Illumination has received major improvements, offering faster raytraced real-time GI while fixing yellow color shifts. It also features a new fallback probes algorithm to correctly light smoke particles and objects in large, open areas.
- Visual Programming Enhancements: The graph editor (Visject) received a visual overhaul with a colorful new style, auto-resizing nodes, and better layout readability. Additionally, a new “Visject Wrangler” introduces lazy connection features, letting developers easily connect, insert, or remove nodes using quick mouse and keyboard shortcuts.
- Spring Bone Physics: A new node allows developers to simulate natural, physics-based trailing motion (like tails or cloth) for a connected chain of skeletal bones. This secondary motion automatically reacts to gravity and wind while seamlessly preserving the character’s primary animations.
- MSDF Fonts: Multi-channel Signed Distance Field fonts are now supported for crisp, high-quality text rendering at large scales. This addition also enables advanced procedural texturing effects like outlines, glows, and shadows.
- Editor Usability Updates: Editor navigation is significantly improved with a new 3D direction gizmo, a compact tree view in the content window, and a “Good Game View” toggle to hide all widgets.
- Rendering and Color Space: A new Linear Color Space workflow is available to ensure imported color maps handle sRGB curves correctly. Furthermore, Screen Space Reflections have been highly optimized and Environment Probes now feature a Box Projection option for more accurate interior reflections.
- SDL Platform Backend: The engine now defaults to using the SDL3 library on Linux for handling inputs and window management. This change guarantees a far more stable development experience for Linux users running Wayland or X11.
- New Debug Tools: New GPU profiling commands like
ProfilerGPU.DumpandGPUDevice.DumpResourceshave been added. These allow developers to quickly measure rendering frame stats and log detailed GPU resource memory usage.
Key Links
You can learn more about Flax Engine and see Flax Engine 1.12 in action in the video below.