With the news still hot off the presses about Unreal Engine 4 releasing their game engine for free to its users, Unity 5 has come out… and it’s free too.

See Also: DirectX 12 Coming to Unity 5, Can Increase CPU-bound Game Performance by 50%

Unity 5, the full-featured game engine, will be free of all upfront charges and royalties, which according to the company “…does not charge on a per title basis and you do not pay royalties or pay revenue share, even for games and applications made with Unity 5 Personal Edition.”

Unity is distinguishing between two tiers: a paid “Professional Edition” which offers beta access and a number of customer support features at $75 per month, and their free of cost full-featured game engine “Personal Edition.”

Both newly released Unity 5, and Unreal Engine 4 support Oculus natively, so if there were ever a time to get into developing for VR, now is the time.

Improvements over Unity 4 include:

  • The Physically-based Standard Shader to make your materials look consistent in any lighting environment, cross platform.
  • Real-time Global Illumination, built on Geomerics Enlighten technology.
  • The Audio Mixer, to massively improve audio in your game.
  • HDR Reflection Probes to enhance visual fidelity.
  • PhysX 3.3 to bring massive performance improvements to 3D physics.
  • Major updates to the animation system.
  • WebGL preview

Download Unity 5 free of cost

 

Road to VR will be covering the new updated Unity game engine at GDC this year in San Francisco, so check back for announcements and other release information for your favorite VR-related gadgets and software.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Stray Toaster

    Clearly, this pricing structure is a reaction to Epic making the Unreal engine free yesterday. I am no economist or business professional but it seems like Unity was forced into this position and this is not a sustainable business model for them. Both companies may be positioning themselves to be bought out, if they have not been already.