Unity 4.0 launches with Linux preview, Flash Player
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The latest version of the increasingly pervasive Unity engine is now available for purchase and download.
While it's not as familiar to the ear as Unreal, CryEngine or Frostbite, Unity is popular among indie and mobile developers for its ease of use, relatively low cost, and scalability. It allows for high-level performance on mobile devices and has been licensed by major publishers like Square Enix, as well as shipping with all Wii U development kits.
The new version's highlights include DirectX 11 support, the long awaited Mecanim animation tools, a Linux deployment preview and an Adobe Flash Player deployment add-on.
For those who like development details, here's the official blurb on Unity 4.0's glory.
- Shuriken particle system supports external forces, bent normals, automatic culling, and environmental collisions
- 3D texture support
- Navigation: dynamic obstacles and avoidance priority
- Major optimizations in GUI performance and memory usage
- Dynamic fonts on all platforms with HTML-like markup
- Remote Unity Web Player debugging
- New Project Window workflows
- Iterative lightmap baking
- Refined component-based workflows
- Extensible inspectors for custom classes
- Improved Cubemap import pipeline
- Geometry data improvements for huge memory and performance savings
- Meshes can be constructed from non-triangle geometry – render points & lines efficiently