We have released Unigine 2.3: finally fixed a lot of things that we did not have time for. The first of all, the Earth is round now (usually in the videogames the Earth is flat) and we introduced geo-coordinates. It means that you can create a virtual globe: make avia-training with an airplane going, lets say, from New York to Moscow. It’s all real now. You can re-create the Trans-Siberian Railway – super cool, without cuts, with all the leaves on the trees moving like real.
Denis Shergin, CEO of Unigine, in interview to Five o’clock (read full text in Russian)
What you can find in Unigine 2.3:
Round Earth
Now you can create round (ellipsoid) 3D Earth: objects can be placed in geo-coordinates (longitude / latitude / altitude) and visualized correctly even for high-altitude in-atmosphere flight.
Updated Terrain Materials
Terrain material system has been switched to metalness workflow. There’s no limit on the number of layers and materials anymore.
Experimental Landscape Tool
Huge terrains are one of the UNIGINE’s key features, so in order to streamline workflow and improve productivity of teams creating them we have completely rewritten the Landscape tool.
We are working with the game development industry, so we need to understand how it all works from the inside. If you want to create a cool instrument, you need to make it like for yourself, otherwise it won’t work.
Denis Shergin, CEO of Unigine, in interview to Five o’clock (read full text in Russian)
New Depth of Field Effect
DoF effect has been completely reworked in order to achieve photorealistic effect, chromatic aberration support has been addedd and transitions between in-focus and out-of-focus parts of the image have been improved.
Shoreline
By using FieldShoreline, you can create nice swash zones, where waves smoothly fade out right next to the shore. It also adds an effect of wet sand and wet objects on the shore: stones, litter, etc.
Underwater Improvements
Underwater scenes are now somewhat more realistic with added caustics and improved underwater light shafts.
Full list of changes and updates on developer’s website.