Unity launches Unity 6 game development engine with native Windows on Arm support, updated Sentis AI library, and improved graphics performance

Unity has launched the latest version of its game development engine, Unity 6, allowing game programmers to quickly develop video games on Windows, Macs, and Linux computers.

Game companies like Kojima Productions typically use custom game engines that are developed in-house for their top titles. This gives them the flexibility to add unique capabilities not found in any commercial game engine and to work around bugs and issues quickly. Unreal Engine is the most powerful and feature-packed game development engine available, and has been used to make triple-A games, including BioShock, Fortnite, and Black Myth: Wukong.

But the complexity of an in-house engine or Unreal Engine can also hinder rapid development for smaller companies due to the greater complexity of these engines and the vast amount of OS versions, CPUs, and GPUs in use, so a simpler commercial game platform like Unity can shorten the time, effort, and money required to test and launch simpler titles.

The new version adds several key features to allow developers to create better-looking games more quickly. The graphics rendering performance and quality have been improved, with up to 50 percent better performance versus the prior version. Unity 6 adds Spatial-Temporal Post-Processing (STP) to upscale low-resolution renders in real-time to help improve game performance. The environmental rendering of skies, water, foam, and vegetation has also been improved for more realistic in-game environments.

Unity 6 also adds an updated Sentis AI library to power games with real-time, real-world AI response to input from cameras, microphones, and other sensors. Programmers can use AI of their own choice from popular sources such as Hugging Face. The UI (User Interface) Toolkit and tools for editing games, such as ProBuilder and Cinemachine, have been streamlined for better developer productivity. The new version also adds Windows on Arm support for both the editor and compiled apps for the niche Snapdragon X computers. But game developers typically need fast computers with good graphics cards like the ASUS ROG Strix Scar 16 (sold here on Amazon) for high productivity and compatibility with common tools like Autodesk Maya and Adobe Creative Cloud, which do not run on Snapdragon X CPUs.