While this week will be dominated by Oculus due to its annual conference taking place, there’s plenty of other things going on, namely videogame development engine Unity announcing the launch of its next version, 2017.2.
As the platform is one of the most popular for designing and building both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) content naturally the new update has expanded support on that front. It now includes native support for Windows Mixed Reality, Vuforia, and OpenVR on macOS, plus improvements to its support for Google’s ARCore SDK and for Apple’s ARKit through Unity’s ARKit plugin.
“Unity 2017 was the start of a new cycle that evolves the world’s most popular game engine into an ever-expanding creation engine for gaming and a wide range of real-time entertainment,” said Adam Myhill, Head of Cinematics, Unity in a statement. “Unity 2017.2 continues this evolution, by providing enhanced visual tools that truly empower and inspire artists and designers to do what they do best: create amazing content. We believe the power and flexibility within 2017.2 allows for improved experimentation, rapid iteration and a deeper collaboration between disciplines, which is the backbone for truly stunning creations.”
And there’s more. Unity 2017.2 adds features that will boost and optimise performance for VR developers. Stereo Instancing (the next iteration of single-pass rendering) is now available for all integrated PC platforms using DX11, and Video Asynchronous Reprojection for Google VR, offering a higher quality video experience on Daydream.
Unity 2017.2 may have launched today but the company is preparing for the next version, Unity 2017.3. There’s a beta currently running so for any developers interested in trying it out, head to the website.
As Unity continues to expand support for VR and AR, VRFocus will bring you the latest updates.
via Mint VR