Unity\u00c2\u00a0is a\u00c2\u00a0cross-platform\u00c2\u00a0game engine\u00c2\u00a0developed by\u00c2\u00a0Unity Technologies,\u00c2\u00a0first announced and released in June 2005 at\u00c2\u00a0Apple Inc.’s\u00c2\u00a0Worldwide Developers Conference\u00c2\u00a0as an\u00c2\u00a0OS X-exclusive game engine. As of 2018, the engine has been extended to support 27 platforms.\u00c2\u00a0The engine can be used to create both\u00c2\u00a0three-dimensional\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0two-dimensional\u00c2\u00a0games as well as\u00c2\u00a0simulations\u00c2\u00a0for its many platforms. Several major versions of Unity have been released since its launch, with the latest stable version being Unity 2018.2.18, released on November 30, 2018.<\/p>\n
Unity gives users the ability to create games in both\u00c2\u00a02D\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a03D, and the engine offers a primary scripting API in\u00c2\u00a0C#, for both the Unity editor in the form of plugins, and games themselves, as well as\u00c2\u00a0drag and drop\u00c2\u00a0functionality. Prior to C# being the primary programming language used for the engine, it previously supported\u00c2\u00a0Boo, which was removed in the Unity 5\u00c2\u00a0release, and a version of\u00c2\u00a0JavaScript\u00c2\u00a0called\u00c2\u00a0Unity-Script, which was deprecated in August 2017 after the release of Unity 2017.1 in favor of C#.<\/p>\n
The engine has support for the following\u00c2\u00a0graphics APIs:\u00c2\u00a0Direct3D\u00c2\u00a0on Windows and Xbox One;\u00c2\u00a0OpenGL\u00c2\u00a0on Linux, macOS, and Windows;\u00c2\u00a0OpenGL ES\u00c2\u00a0on Android and iOS;\u00c2\u00a0WebGL\u00c2\u00a0on the web; and proprietary APIs on the\u00c2\u00a0video game consoles. Additionally, Unity supports the low-level APIs\u00c2\u00a0Metal\u00c2\u00a0on iOS and macOS and\u00c2\u00a0Vulkan\u00c2\u00a0on Android, Linux, and Windows, as well as\u00c2\u00a0Direct3D 12\u00c2\u00a0on Windows and Xbox One.<\/p>\n
Within 2D games, Unity allows importation of sprites and an advanced 2D world renderer. For 3D games, Unity allows specification of\u00c2\u00a0texture compression,\u00c2\u00a0mipmaps, and resolution settings for each platform that the game engine supports,\u00c2\u00a0and provides support for\u00c2\u00a0bump mapping,\u00c2\u00a0reflection mapping,\u00c2\u00a0parallax mapping,\u00c2\u00a0screen space ambient occlusion\u00c2\u00a0(SSAO), dynamic shadows using\u00c2\u00a0shadow maps,\u00c2\u00a0render-to-texture\u00c2\u00a0and full-screen post-processing effects.<\/p>\n
Since about 2016 Unity also offers cloud-based services to developers, these are presently: Unity Ads, Unity Analytics, Unity Certification, Unity Cloud Build, Unity Everyplay, Unity IAP (“In app purchase” – for the Apple and Google app stores), Unity Multiplayer, Unity Performance Reporting, Unity Collaborate and Unity Hub.<\/p>\n
Unity supports the creation of custom vertexes, fragments (or pixels), tessellation, compute\u00c2\u00a0shaders\u00c2\u00a0and Unity’s own surface shaders using\u00c2\u00a0Cg, a modified version of Microsoft’s\u00c2\u00a0High-Level Shading Language\u00c2\u00a0developed by\u00c2\u00a0Nvidia.<\/p>\n
The Unity editor is supported on\u00c2\u00a0Windows\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0macOS, with a version of the editor available for the\u00c2\u00a0Linux\u00c2\u00a0platform, albeit in an experimental stage,\u00c2\u00a0while the engine itself currently supports building games for 27 different platforms. The platforms are listed as the following:\u00c2\u00a0iOS,\u00c2\u00a0Android,\u00c2\u00a0Tizen,\u00c2\u00a0Windows,\u00c2\u00a0Universal Windows Platform,\u00c2\u00a0macOS,\u00c2\u00a0Linux,\u00c2\u00a0WebGL,\u00c2\u00a0PlayStation 4,\u00c2\u00a0PlayStation Vita,\u00c2\u00a0Xbox One,\u00c2\u00a0Wii U,\u00c2\u00a03DS,\u00c2\u00a0Oculus Rift,\u00c2\u00a0Google Cardboard,\u00c2\u00a0SteamVR,\u00c2\u00a0PlayStation VR,\u00c2\u00a0Gear VR,\u00c2\u00a0Windows Mixed Reality,\u00c2\u00a0Daydream,\u00c2\u00a0Android TV,\u00c2\u00a0Samsung Smart TV,\u00c2\u00a0tvOS,\u00c2\u00a0Nintendo Switch,\u00c2\u00a0Fire OS, Facebook Gameroom, Apple’s ARKit, Google’s\u00c2\u00a0ARCore<\/a>, and\u00c2\u00a0Vuforia.<\/p>\n Unity formerly supported seven other platforms including its own Unity Web Player. The Unity Web Player was a browser plugin that was only supported on Windows and macOS via\u00c2\u00a0Chrome,\u00c2\u00a0Internet Explorer 11, and\u00c2\u00a0Firefox,\u00c2\u00a0however it was deprecated in favor of\u00c2\u00a0WebGL.\u00c2\u00a0Since version 5, Unity has been offering its WebGL bundle compiled to JavaScript using a 2-stage language translator (C#\u00c2\u00a0to\u00c2\u00a0C++\u00c2\u00a0and finally to\u00c2\u00a0JavaScript).<\/p>\n Unity is the default\u00c2\u00a0software development kit\u00c2\u00a0(SDK) used for Nintendo’s\u00c2\u00a0Wii U\u00c2\u00a0video game console, with a free copy included by Nintendo with each Wii U developer license. Unity Technologies calls this bundling of a third-party SDK an “industry first”.<\/p>\n The above is a brief about Unity. Watch this space for more updates on the latest trends in Technology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Unity\u00c2\u00a0is a\u00c2\u00a0cross-platform\u00c2\u00a0game engine\u00c2\u00a0developed by\u00c2\u00a0Unity Technologies,\u00c2\u00a0first<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,274],"tags":[18,275],"class_list":["post-1441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-techtrends","category-unity","tag-technology","tag-unity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1443,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1441\/revisions\/1443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.amt.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}