The non-profit organization Open 3D Foundation (O3DF) has published the first significant release of the Open 3D Engine (O3DE), an open 3D game engine capable of developing modern AAA games and high-fidelity simulations capable of real-time operation and cinematic quality. The code is written in C++ and published under the Apache 2.0 license. There is support for Linux, Windows, macOS, iOS and Android platforms.
The O3DE engine was open sourced in July this year by Amazon and is based on the code of the previously developed Amazon Lumberyard proprietary engine built on CryEngine engine technologies licensed from Crytek in 2015. To develop the engine on a neutral platform under the auspices of the Linux Foundation, the Open 3D Foundation was created, within which, in addition to Amazon, such companies as Adobe, Huawei, Intel, Red Hat, Niantic, AccelByte, Apocalypse Studios, Audiokinetic, joined the joint work on the engine, Genvid Technologies, International Game Developers Association, SideFX and Open Robotics.
The engine is already used by Amazon, several game and animation studios, and robotics companies. Of the games created on the basis of the engine, New World and Deadhaus Sonata can be noted. The project was originally designed to be adapted to your needs and has a modular architecture. In total, more than 30 modules are offered, supplied as separate libraries, suitable for replacement, integration into third-party projects and use separately. For example, thanks to modularity, developers can replace the graphics renderer, sound system, language support, network stack, physics engine, and any other components.
The main components of the engine:
- Integrated environment for game development.
- Multi-threaded photorealistic rendering system Atom Renderer with support for Vulkan, Metal and DirectX 12 graphics APIs.
- Extensible 3D model editor.
- sound subsystem.
- Character animation system (Emotion FX).
- System for the development of semi-finished products (prefab).
- Engine for simulation of physical processes in real time. NVIDIA PhysX, NVIDIA Cloth, NVIDIA Blast, and AMD TressFX are supported for physics simulation.
- Math libraries using SIMD instructions.
- Network subsystem with support for traffic compression and encryption, simulation of network problems, data replication and stream synchronization.
- Universal mesh format for game resources. It is possible to generate resources from Python scripts and load resources in asynchronous mode.
- Components for defining game logic in Lua and Python.
Other differences between O3DE and the Amazon Lumberyard engine include a new build system based on Cmake, modular architecture, use of open utilities, a new prefab system, an extensible user interface based on Qt, additional cloud services, performance optimizations, new networking capabilities, an improved engine rendering with support for ray tracing, global illumination, forward and deferred rendering.
It is noted that after the discovery of the engine code, more than 250 developers joined the project, who implemented 2182 changes. The first release of the project has passed the stabilization stage and is recognized as ready for the development of professional 3D games and simulators. For Linux, the formation of packages in the deb format has begun, and an installer has been proposed for Windows. The new version also adds new features such as profiling and performance testing tools, an experimental terrain generator, integration with the Script Canvas visual programming environment, a Gem extension system with support for cloud services, add-ons for creating multiplayer online games, an SDK for engine configuration and support development on Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android platforms. Packages with the Kythera artificial intelligence engine, Cesium geospatial 3D models, and PopcornFX visual effects have been released as gems for O3DE.
Source: opennet.ru