iPhone to Get Unity-Powered 3D Gaming
by Eric March on March 31, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Unity Technologies has just issued a press release stating that they plan to bring iPhone and iPod Touch support to their Unity 3D gaming engine. Unity is a cross-platform 3D development engine designed to allow developers to simply and easily deploy games across Windows, Mac, Linux, and even online within browsers (with the appropriate plugin). It features tons of powerful features, including shaders, light and shadow, scripted events, terrain generation, and even a full physics engine. And now, it’s coming to the iPhone’s beefy PowerVR MBX chip.
Unity Technologies, a 3D game development tool provider for creating console-quality games for the desktop and Web, today announced that the company will support game development for the popular iPhone platform.
The Unity engine is the core technology that facilitates visually rich, engaging 3D game play, whether it’s on a traditional desktop, or on the Web at major gaming sites like shockwave.com, or now on the world’s leading mobile device – the iPhone.
“With iPhone support, Unity is poised to become the single source for game developers who want to create best-of-breed, 3D-quality games that can be easily and quickly ported to all platforms, including consoles, devices, PC/Mac, and now, the iPhone,” said David Helgason, CEO of Unity Technologies. “Specifically, Unity’s support of iPhone addresses the developer’s need to create more and better mobile/portable games that support the consumers ‘on-the-go’ lifestyle.”
Having played with the demos, I have to say that I’m quite impressed with what it’s capable of. For a mobile, portable platform, the visuals are superb, and the physics are bang on. Having this come to the iPhone will be a boon to developers looking to start their next gaming project off on the right foot. So what might we be able to expect? I’ve done up a few simple examples of what Unity might look like on the iPod Touch. These are not actual features coming to the iPhone, just an example of what Unity games might look like. For more details, check out the full press release, and then tool around their website to get a good look at what Unity is all about. (Remember to download the plugin and check out the live demos!)
Think this is an April Fools joke? Check out this comment for some proof of validation.
Concept shots (click to enlarge)
(Source: TUAW)
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Posted in Gaming Related, SDK, iPhone OS 2.0
April 1st, 2008 at 5:02 am
Oh my f__king hell!
http://unity3d.com/gallery/
SWEET news, Eric. This is damn _amazing_!
What a lovely birthday gift.
April 1st, 2008 at 5:32 am
In an attempt to find out if this is in fact a hoax or not (hence, it is April Fool’s today), I gave the Unity Technologies San Francisco office a call tonight at 5:20am. (Yeah, I know, early, right?.. I don’t sleep much.
) As I might of expected, the office is currently closed, and there was no one to take my call at this time.
I may attempt to give the office another call in the morning – I may not.
However!…
I did in fact find the following information from within the Unity Technologies Community Discussion Boards:
“Please note that this has been well discussed here on these forums since the iPhone’s introduction (just do a search looking for ‘iPhone’ and you’ll see). So do know that we’re looking at the SDK and once we’ve digested it in full we can see what sort of plans we might make.
Until then keep on truckin’ with Unity!
_________________
Cheers,
Tom Higgins – Product Evangelist”
This was posted on March 7th, 2008. (Many days before April Fool’s.) Upon reading this statement left by the Product Evangelist himself, I am feeling much more certain about this news actually being true.
Just thought I’d clear that up for all of you who may have moved straight on to thinking that this was in fact a joke.
Update/Edit:
I also found this thread on the Unity Discussion Forums.
Update/Edit 2:
Just got done playing with the demo’s found on the website from within my firefox browser! Now THAT is impressive!
April 1st, 2008 at 9:12 am
I’d considered the possibility of a hoax, but there were too many things that rang true here.
1) It was a day early.
2) The engine has been established for the last few years now.
3) This is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to see come out for the iPhone.
4) Most of the features of this engine are well within the iPhone’s capabilities. I’m not completely sure about the PowerVR’s hardware support for light blooming or sourced shadows, but it’s probably workable. My only real concern is the physics; that’s CPU-intensive depending on how complex their physics model is, so I’m curious if the iPHone can handle it.
Overall though, Unity isn’t nearly as powerful as desktop-class 3D engines, but it has been simplified and optimized for browser and mobile use, which makes it ideal for the iPhone, especially with solid 3D support in hardware, so my mockups above might not be too far from the reality.
In the end, there were just too many things here that sounded perfectly legitimate and plausible to be an April Fool’s joke. That thread you linked to just seals it.
April 1st, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I gave the San Fran. office another call just now (2:38pm GMT-6), and still, no one picked up. I’ve given up.
Anyway, I believe this isn’t a hoax, as well, Eric.