Ultra Engine, a new game engine from the creators of the Leadwerks game engine and the Ultra App Kit UI library was just released in early access. The engine is making some pretty big performance claims, specifically 10x the performance of Unity! There are two versions of this engine, the standard Lua powered version, as well as a the Pro release which adds C++ support.
Features of Ultra Engine pro include:
Graphics
- Vulkan graphics
- Multi-display support
- PBR materials
- Load 3D models from glTF, OBJ, MDL, and FBX (using glTF converter)
- Image loading, saving, processing
- Forward renderer with uniform lighting model
- Vertex, pixel, geometry, and tessellation shaders
- Normal mapping with specular
- Post-processing stack
- Hardware tessellation
- Environment probes
- Instanced rendering
- Real-time mesh modification
VR
- SteamVR integration with support for a variety of headsets
- Fast stereoscopic rendering
- Controller input and display
- Attach objects to hand controllers and headset
- Translation and rotation view offset
Entity Component System
- Multiple components per entity are supported
- Save and load game states
- Visual flowgraph connects component actions to create event sequences
Terrain
- Dynamically sculpt and paint terrain
- Cut holes in terrain
- Up to 256 material layers
- Hardware tessellation
3D Models
- Load and save Khronos glTF files
- Load and save Wavefront OBJ files
- Convert FBX files to glTF and load
- Convert Collada files to glTF and load
- Load other formats with plugin system
Animation
- Animated skinned characters
- Share skeletons across multiple characters
- Attach objects to bones
- Built-in animation transition and update system
- Hardware skinning
- Blend and transition animations
Physics
- Fast and accurate asynchronous rigid body physics
- Constraints including hinge, ball, kinematic, plane, and sliding joints
- Motorized joints with limits
- Generate physics shapes
- Swept collision
- Raycasting with lines or spheres
Pathfinding
- Navmesh pathfinding
- Crowd avoidance and steering
- Navigation areas visible in editor
- Physics-based character controller
- Automatic AI following
Sound
- 3D sound spatialization
- Head-related transfer function (HRTF)
- Audio filters including distortion, flanging, echo, and EAX reverb effects
- Emit a sound from any entity
- Automatic channel management
- Skip to any time in sound
GUI
- Resolution-independent for any DPI
- Extensible widgets system
- Load SVG vector images
- Set widget and item image
- Change mouse cursor
- Custom color schemes stored in JSON files
Plugins
- Basis Universal supercompressed texture support
- FreeImage Texture Support for PNG, JPG, BMP, TGA, PSD, etc.
- Wavefront OBJ model saving
- ISPC Fast Texture Compression
- Quake package, model, and texture loading
System
- File I/O
- File system watcher
- Memory allocation and management
- String manipulation (split, search, conversion, etc.)
- Message boxes and file / folder requester
- Plugin system
Steamworks Integration
- Authentication
- User info
- Leaderboards
- Stats and achievements
- Multiplayer lobbies
- Peer-to-peer networking
- Voice over Internet protocol (VoIP)
Key Links
You can learn more about Ultra Engine and see it in action in the video below.